


Mouse Song

by FlamingoQueen



Series: A Hazy Shade of Winter [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Above and beyond canon-typical violence too, Biting, Bucky Barnes is good with children and so is the Winter Soldier, Bucky’s sisters, Canon-Typical Violence, Dehumanization, Gaslighting, Gen, Hydra, Interrogation, KGB, Kidnapping, Medical Torture, POV Multiple, POV varying, Sassy Bucky Barnes, See endnotes for content warnings, The General - Freeform, The General’s granddaughter, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, dachas everywhere, holiday theme if you squint, rough handling of a small child, standard Winter Soldier trauma umbrella, the Soviets still have Bucky, the Winter Soldier has opinions about gardening, the excavation team, the girl with brown curls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-08 02:57:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 61,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17378288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlamingoQueen/pseuds/FlamingoQueen
Summary: Not every mission is an assassination, and not every target goes on a kill list. Sometimes a mission is a personal favor. And sometimes a target needs to be rescued.(Or: The one where the General’s granddaughter has an unpleasant encounter with the men who say “bro,” the men who say “bro” have an even more unpleasant encounter with the Winter Soldier, and the Soldier remembers things he shouldn’t. Naturally, everything is horrible.)





	1. Myshka: Even little mice have teeth

**Author's Note:**

> I know just enough about Soviet Russia to be dangerous (and to potentially irritate people who know more), and I have also taken some liberties for the sake of the plot. So please excuse some of the cultural inaccuracies in this ficlet. 
> 
> There are content/trigger warnings at the end of this. I've made them vague enough to hopefully avoid outright spoilers for anything beyond what can already be found in summary/tags. Please be safe, people. If you want or need more specific details, [message me](https://flamingo-queen-writes.tumblr.com/). Thanks, and enjoy!

* * *

_Before the mice were sound asleep,_  
_There came the dreaded cat._  
_“I’ve not come here to harm you:_  
_Let’s have a friendly chat._  
_In this sweet Christmas season_  
_I would not touch a mouse._  
_Let Love and Peace prevail:_  
_We’ve Christmas in our house!”_

— _Musevisa_   (“The Mouse Song”)

 

* * *

 

**—Moscow: Friday morning, 20 November, 1970—**

Mama _said_ they were going to buy presents for her grandparents today. And for her aunts and uncles, and all the cousins. And something special for Miss Tanya, the woman who walks her to the school every morning so that Mama can go to work writing down what other people say.

They _aren’t_ going to buy a present for the Soldier. Maria had asked, but Papa had frowned, and Mama had crossed herself, and that was the end of that.

They were still going to spend the day buying presents for the rest of the family, though, or they were until Uncle Pasha had talked to Papa about what it would look like to buy things so soon. Then Papa had agreed that it was too early and it would look bad, and put his foot down when Mama tried to say no one would have to know. Papa has a reputation to uphold in the government, and Uncle Pasha knows all about that because he has a government job, too.

And that’s why Maria is walking to the school instead of buying things in the _Beriozka_ shops. She holds onto Miss Tanya’s gloved hand with her own mittened hand and jumps over the patches of ice that are still frozen because the sun hasn’t turned them into slush yet. She doesn’t miss a single landing.

Most mornings, Miss Tanya laughs when she jumps and even dares her to make bigger jumps over puddles when it’s warmer out. Today, though, Miss Tanya is not laughing. Maria wonders if she knows about the presents and the way Papa said they were not buying any of them yet. It had made Maria not laugh, learning that they wouldn’t go to the shops after all. It had even made her shout, and stomp her feet, and be sent to bed without dessert.

They get to the corner where they always turn right to get to the school, and Maria can’t wait to get there, because it’s very cold outside and her scarf is slipping from all the jumping over ice patches, letting in cold air that Mama says will make her sick. But they go left, instead.

Maria tugs at Miss Tanya’s hand and says that they’re going the wrong way, but Miss Tanya frowns at her and says that they are going somewhere new today, somewhere fun that’s an exciting secret. She doesn’t look excited about it, though. She looks like something has scared her, like her toes are bare and the cat is under the sofa waiting to bite them, but she doesn’t know when the cat will jump out.

Grown-ups aren’t supposed to be afraid, but Maria knows that they can be. She knows because her mama is afraid of the Soldier, like there’s a tiger under the sofa, not a little housecat, and the tiger wants to bite off more than her toes, wants to eat her right up and not leave anything behind.

Whenever they visit her grandparents in Perm and the Soldier is there at Grandfather’s shoulder, still and silent, Mama stays behind Papa until she finds a room with a door, and tries not to look at the Soldier, like looking at _him_ will make him look at _her_ , like it will make him angry. She tries to make Maria hide with her, but Maria slips out of the room as soon as she can, every time. And when they get home, Mama argues with Papa, yelling about dangerous wild beasts and frayed leashes and how the Soldier will snap and kill them all.

It doesn’t make sense to her for Mama to be afraid of the Soldier, though, because the Soldier is really nice. He’s not a tiger at all. He only _looks_ like one. He got her down from an apple tree once, when she climbed up a ladder and then up into the tree, and then the wind blew the ladder over. He knows where the best snacks are hidden no matter what house they’re visiting, and how to give her the snacks without her parents seeing. He calls her _myshka_ , little mouse, and he lets her pull herself up to sit on his shoulders and hang onto his hair while he walks endless patrol around the dacha, even though she’s supposed to act like a lady and keep her hands and her feet to herself.

And he taught her how to bite people, really, _really_ hard. “Like you mean it, _myshka_ ,” he said. “Bite down until you taste salt and metal,” he said, “and then don’t let go. Make them hurt,” he said. “If they want to hurt you, hurt them first. Make them sorry.”

She’s not supposed to bite people, though. She’s seven years old now, and that’s too big to bite people. Back when she was just four, before the Soldier had taught her, she bit one of the other kids at the nursery when he hugged her and wouldn’t let go. Mama had been angry, and Papa had been stern, and they had both told her that she should never, ever bite anyone again. For any reason.

But after that, when Papa had dropped her off for a summer-long visit with her grandparents at the dacha with the apple trees, the Soldier had overheard Papa complain about how it was bad for his reputation if his daughter went around biting kids for hugging her. And later, while he was stacking apples in a crate for Papa to take back with him to Moscow, the Soldier had told her that if someone grabs her, she _should_ bite them. Hard. Like she means it.

And then he had taught her how to do it.

She hasn’t bitten anyone else, though. Not since the Soldier rolled up his sleeve and held out his right arm in the apple orchard and taught her how to do it right, showed her how to bite as many times as it took for her to get it perfect, and then helped her rinse her mouth out so she wouldn’t get blood on her dress. It’s their secret, that she knows how to bite people who grab her.

Miss Tanya isn’t grabbing her, not really. She’s just afraid and is holding her hand really tight as they cross the street and go the wrong way, away from the school. Mama is afraid of the Soldier, so maybe Miss Tanya is, too. Maria looks around for him, and doesn’t see him. She hadn’t thought she would. She only sees him when Grandfather is around, and even then, not always. Last spring when they visited, the Soldier wasn’t there, and when she asked about him, Grandfather had said he was busy sleeping for the whole week.

Since the Soldier isn’t here, Maria wonders what Miss Tanya is afraid of.

At the end of the street, where there’s another chance to turn a different way, Miss Tanya stops, and they stand there at the corner for a long time, watching cars and buses go by. Miss Tanya doesn’t let her hand go. She keeps on squeezing, harder and harder the longer they stand there.

The wind picks up a little, and it’s a lot colder when they just stand there than when they were walking and Maria was jumping over icy patches. Maria says that she’s cold, but Miss Tanya just shivers and holds her hand even tighter. Maria’s hand hurts inside her mitten.

The lights keep changing colors, and the cars keep driving past, and Miss Tanya snaps at her to be still and stop wiggling around like a fish on a line. Maria just wants to go inside where it’s warm, and she wants Miss Tanya to let go of her hand so that her fingers will stop hurting.

Then one of the cars doesn’t drive past them. It slows down as it comes closer and then stops right in front of them. The door opens, and Miss Tanya brings Maria around in front of her and pushes her into the car before she can see more than a little bit.

There’s a man with yellow hair in the back of the car, behind the driver. Maria doesn’t want to get in the car with him, but Miss Tanya shoves her further in and climbs in after her, and then she’s stuck in between them while the door closes and the car starts to drive away. She tries to get as far away from the man as she can, and ends up in Miss Tanya’s lap.

Miss Tanya is saying things to the two men in the car, telling them that she’s done what they wanted, telling them that Maria is just a little girl, asking them to promise they won’t hurt her. Miss Tanya says that they’ll give Maria back once they have their money, and then it will all be over. But she says it like she’s asking, like she isn’t sure that will happen, but she hopes it will.

The driver doesn’t say anything, but he looks at Maria in the mirror and grins wide under his oily black mustache, and she doesn’t like his face at all. His eyes are hungry, and he’s a tiger under the sofa. He’ll eat her up. The man with the yellow hair is laughing and saying “Sure, sure, bro, just until we have the money.” Maria doesn’t like his face, either, or his laugh, but he’s not a tiger. He’s just a really mean housecat, the kind that will puff up real big and growl, but can’t eat you.

Maria starts to ask who they are, where they’re going, why they aren’t going to school, but Miss Tanya hisses at her to stay quiet, and Miss Tanya is so, so afraid. She pulls Maria closer to her, wraps her arms around Maria’s waist, and whispers into her hair that everything will be just fine if she’s a good girl, a little lady, quiet and obedient and not making a fuss. They only want her Papa to send them money, and then she will go home. But she must not make too much noise.

There’s something about Miss Tanya’s fear that spreads like spilled _kompot_ , thick and gushing out onto everything and making Maria feel as cold inside her ribs as she did while standing outside in the wind. She wants to be very small, smaller than she already is. She wants to be so small that she falls into the crack between the seat cushions and none of the grown-ups in the car can reach her—not even Miss Tanya.

She is trying to be very small when the car stops moving and the man driving it honks the horn three times, short-short-long. Maria pulls away from Miss Tanya enough to press her face to the window. There is a building, a big one with a wide open door that could fit two whole cars in it. The door is all dark inside, even though it’s morning and there’s lots of light outside. The windows are all dark, too, lined up and small at the top of the building. Some of them are covered up with wood.

For a while, there are no people around anywhere, just the two men in the car with her, and Miss Tanya. Maria cranes her neck to look out the back of the car, and there is another building there, just as open and empty and dark as the one in front of them. There are also rusty cars with parts of them missing. The winter slush over everything makes it look sad and cold, but Maria thinks it would still look sad, even in the summer. Sad, and scary.

There’s a movement in the doorway of the building in front of them, and two more men come out from the darkness, wearing big, gray coats, with their knit hats pulled low over their foreheads. They don’t look any friendlier than the driver does. One of them has a really crooked nose and his face looks like a lumpy potato. The other one’s face is already red, even though he just came outside and hasn’t been in the cold very long. They look like the kind of people her parents warn her not to look at in the eyes, because they will do bad things to her if she does. _Tigers_ , she thinks.

Maria looks down, just in case, and then closes her eyes to be sure. This must be what Mama feels when she’s in the same room as the Soldier. _Don’t look at them_ , she thinks. _Don’t let them see you, don’t make them angry. Be small, be quiet, be a mouse. Tigers don’t bother with mice…_  

“But if they try to hurt you,” the Soldier’s voice drifts through her thoughts, soft and low, tender but strong, with absolute certainty in every solid word. “If they hurt you, hurt them back. Like you mean it. Make them regret touching you.”

Maria swallows, and lifts her head, opens her eyes. Even a mouse has teeth. And mice are quick. They can get out of tight places and run away and hide where no tigers can find them. She can get out of the car. Maybe go inside one of the dark buildings, find a little place to be still and quiet in until they give up. She’s good at that game.

The driver gets out, and opens the door for the man with the yellow hair. Maria scrambles over, but they close the door before she can get through it, and she can’t find a handle with her mittened hands. Then Miss Tanya disappears from the other side, and now Maria is stuck in the car alone, with no way out. She tries to find a handle, or the crank for rolling down the window, but there is nothing for her to grab or pull on.

Outside in the yard, Miss Tanya is surrounded by tigers and looks very afraid. But she is also glaring, with her eyes narrow and her lips flat, and there is a lot of talking that Maria can’t hear. She wishes that she was at school right now, surrounded by her friends and the teacher, and drinking tea with jam in a warm room. She wonders, as she crawls into the front of the car to check those doors, whether anyone even knows that she isn’t where she’s supposed to be. Did the school call Papa when she didn’t get there on time? Did they call Mama? Or did Miss Tanya already tell the school that Maria was going somewhere else today? Maybe everyone thinks that she is in the right place already.

Miss Tanya is gone when Maria looks out the driver’s window, her mitten in her mouth as she tries to work her fingers under the handle to get the door open. It’s locked, but it was locked when the driver got out earlier. It must just be heavy. She pulls and pulls, watching as the men in the yard—now just three of them—have an argument with lots of gestures.

Maria gives up on the handle and looks at the door. It _has_ to open. It opened for the driver. She looks at the crank and thinks about rolling the window down, but they would see her doing that before she could get out that way. She runs her fingers along the door, feeling for something else she can pull on, and there’s a knob on the top. It takes both hands, and she has to pull off her second mitten to get a good grip, but the knob finally pops up with a click that sounds loud in the silence inside the car, and then she goes back to the door handle.

It pulls out this time, and she flings her body against the door to open it, letting in cold, cold air, and sending her sprawling on the grit of the yard, landing hard on her knee and shoulder. She scrambles to her feet, but the lumpy potato-faced man has her arm in his hand before she gets more than a few steps away. She tries to wiggle her arm out of her coat and maybe get away like that, but his grip is much harder than Miss Tanya’s was.

He grabs her so hard she is afraid he’ll squeeze her arm into two pieces, and yanks her up off the ground and into the air so that her feet dangle and she can’t do more than kick lightly at his knees. It irritates him, but doesn’t seem to hurt him at all. She twists and hollers and tries to kick harder, but he’s holding her out at arm’s length now, and she can’t even reach him, and her shoulder hurts so bad.

Then her feet are on the ground again, but her arm is behind her, and she can’t move without her shoulder catching fire. The men and the yard and the mean buildings and the cold, gray sky all blur together through her tears, and she can’t even understand what they are saying because her shoulder hurts too bad to listen. She can hear what they mean, though, just from the tone of their voices. She knows they are saying bad things, that they are angry at her.

The man twisting her arm lets go, and the man with the red face reaches out and grabs her chin in his hand, and breathes smoky breath at her face, tells her they will hurt her if she tries to run again. He says that they are going to take her out to the country, where no one will find her, and they will keep her there until her papa sends them money. And if she tries to run away, they will break her legs.

He asks her if she understands, and she tries to nod. She doesn’t want her legs to be broken.

Then the man with the mustache, who drove her and Miss Tanya there, says that she’d be good for something even if her papa doesn’t pay. Says that she’s pretty and they shouldn’t even bother with the ransom money. Says they can start her young and break her in before selling her on the market for a lot more. Says that if she’s good to them, maybe they’ll be good to her and make it hurt less. Says they can skip the waiting and the hiding and start now, since she’s learned her lesson.

Maria doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but she knows that she should be a good girl. That she should be a little lady. That she should be a mouse, small and quiet, still and unseen. That if she is good, a lady, a mouse, then maybe they will not grab her arm again, or twist her shoulder again, or break her legs. Or break her in. Or sell her on the market. But even if she doesn’t know what he is talking about, something in his voice says _tiger_ , says _danger_ , says he wants to hurt her, says that she does not want to start now. And even a mouse has teeth.

“Like you mean it, _myshka_.”

The man holding her jaw is not wearing gloves, and so when her teeth close around the soft V of flesh between his thumb and his first finger, she doesn’t taste cotton or wool or leather. She tastes skin, and then salt, and then metal rushing hot and liquid across her tongue as the man shouts and tries to yank his hand back. But she knows how to bite people who grab her. How to bite them _hard_ , like she means it. Her teeth pull and pull as the man swears at her, and the meat of his hand rips apart like a ribbon of gristle in a chunk of beef, tough and catching deep between her teeth.

Then everything is suddenly bright and painful in her head, and there’s a sound like when Grandmother hits the Soldier’s face for letting Maria get leaves in her hair at the dacha, but it’s Maria’s face that lights up hot before everything is dark and quiet and still.

 

* * *

 

**—Route M8 toward Pereslavl-Zalessky: Friday afternoon, 20 November, 1970—**

Maria isn’t sure where she is when she opens her eyes. She’s not even sure she really does open her eyes, because it’s darker than it’s ever been before, even in her little bedroom with the door shut all the way. There’s not even a line of light under the door, or at the edges of a window. And there is a lot of bumping and movement, almost like riding in the tractor at the dacha. And it smells. Smells like oil and plastic and pee.

She tries to sit up, and there’s a crinkly plastic sound like a tarp as she squirms, but everything hurts, and her arms and legs don’t move because they are tied together at her wrists and ankles. Her mouth tastes gross, like she was licking a spoon that didn’t have any food on it except salt, and there’s a hard knot of something scratchy between her teeth, pressing her tongue down. When she tries to reach up to touch her lips and get the knot out, her arms hurt even more than before. Her shoulder throbs and aches, and each bump is fire shooting through it, even when she doesn’t try to move it. And her upper arm feels like a huge bruise, thump-thumping in time with her heart.

For a long time, she isn’t sure where she is, or how she got there, or why her arms and legs are tied up, or why her face hurts, or what is in her mouth that tastes so terrible. She tries to count, because Mama says that counting will help her think. She gets all the way up to 100 and has to start over when there’s a bigger bump than before and her shoulder gets knocked and she loses count.

She doesn’t know how many times she’s counted to 100 before she remembers that Miss Tanya took her to a new place instead of school, and that there were bad men and a car, and that they hurt her arm and told her that they were going to break her legs, and she bit one of them.

Now they are taking her to the country, and if she tries to run again, they will break her legs, just like they said. Maria tries to make her face do what Miss Tanya’s face had done in the yard between the cold, dark buildings with the empty windows, pinching her eyes nearly shut and making her lips into a tight, angry line. But all her face does is crumple up until she’s sobbing wetly into the coiled cables and grimy, tarp-covered carpet in the pitch black darkness of the car trunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musevisa is a Norwegian song about a family of mice celebrating Christmas. It’s bouncy, cheerful and filled with warnings about mousetraps. The authentic version ends with the happy mouse family sleeping peacefully. 
> 
> Two alternate endings have been circulated over the years. This is the first. 
> 
> If you want to hear the tune, you can do so [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeiXN8k_mIg).


	2. Myshka: The bravest little mouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I noticed the link wasn't working in the last chapter's endnote, but it's fixed now if you wanted to listen to [Musevisa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeiXN8k_mIg).

**—Dacha outside of Pereslavl-Zalessky: Saturday afternoon, 21 November, 1970—**

Maria doesn’t know how long she’s been in the tiny room under the stairs. She does know that she’s tired but too afraid to sleep except by accident and for only a little while each time. And that she’s so hungry that her tummy stopped making noises a while ago and it feels like she’ll throw up. And that she’s so thirsty it hurts to open her mouth. And that she is cold, so cold that the spare blankets stacked in the closet beside her don’t do anything to warm her.

She knows that there are three men in the abandoned dacha, and that there is a chair wedged under the doorknob of the closet so that she can’t get out. She can hear them moving around, going up and down the stairs above her and muttering things to each other that they must think she can’t hear.

Things about cutting off her fingers one by one and sending them to Papa if he doesn’t pay them soon. Things about breaking her in after all. Things about teaching her how to treat a man right. They fight about that. Two of the men argue that she is too little, too young. The third one says “Little girls can grow up so fast, bro. They grow up so fast.”

He is the one she is most afraid of, the one with the mustache.

They had untied the ropes around her arms and legs after they dragged her out of the trunk, but they’d left the handkerchief tied around her face, with the knotted ends crammed into her mouth and soaked through with her spit. She couldn’t untie the knot with her shaking fingers, but she had yanked the material down around her neck so that she could scream and cry while she thumped her fist against the closet door.

She’d done that until one of the men—the one who said she could grow up fast—had thumped back from the other side, and told her that he would cut her tongue out if she didn’t stop making noise, bro, and that he would pull all her teeth out if she tried to bite one of them again.

Maria had been so scared then that she’d messed herself, even though she is a big girl now, all of seven years old.

And now she is in the dark still, is squeezed into the corner of the tiny room, with her knees pulled up tight against her chest and her throbbing arm tucked between her chest and her thighs. Sitting in her mess because there is nothing else she can do, nowhere else she can go, no way to get clean. And she would cry some more, but her eyes are as dry as her mouth, and she’s afraid that she won’t be able to be quiet when she cries. She doesn’t want them to cut her tongue out or make her grow up fast.

There is a noise outside the closet, the front door of the dacha opening fast enough and hard enough to slam against the wall. She wonders if one of the men left, or if more men came in. Maybe Papa has sent them money and she will go home now. Maybe that’s Papa himself, coming to get her. But Papa would call her name, would shout “Mashen’ka,” would rush to the closet and jerk the chair away and open the door and—

Instead, there is an angry yell, and a gunshot like when Grandfather brought her with him to inspect an army base and there were men in uniform standing in a line shooting at pieces of paper. There’s a weird metal sound after that, and the angry yelling turns into fear and pain, and then into a sort of wet gurgle and gagging noise.

Maria wonders if the men are fighting again, this time with more than words, and hopes that it isn’t about whether they will slice off her fingers. Someone stomps past the door but doesn’t move the chair at all, and Maria lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She knows that walk, the sound of those boots, the slow swaying stalk of the man who walks like that. Who walks up and down between rows of vegetables, back and forth behind lines of men shooting guns at paper, around and around and around on patrol.

The Soldier.

But it can’t be the Soldier. He only goes where Grandfather or Uncle Volodya send him, and no one knows where she is, so they couldn’t send him here. And she is so afraid, too afraid to be sure. If she thinks the Soldier is here, gets her hopes up, and she’s wrong, it will be worse than never hoping at all. She tries to shrink further into the unyielding corner. _Small and quiet_ , she thinks. _Like a mouse._

There’s more yelling and a few loud thumps from the other room, then a scream that starts and stops very quickly. Something heavy makes a loud thump-crack sound as it slams against the wall her closet shares with the other room, and the wall shakes with the impact. Maria can hear a low, wheezing moan through the wall like one of the men is groaning into her ear where she’s been slumped in the dark. It sounds like the man she bit, sounds like when they had changed his bandage, only worse, like he hurts more. She would move away from the sound, but she’s not sure she can do anything but squeeze into a tighter ball.

She hears scuffling above, like someone is sneaking down the stairs, and then two more gunshots. The gunshots are loud, even louder than the ones on the army base, and there’s a clank of metal hitting metal. Someone goes up the stairs, and she knows that walk, she _does_ , it’s just a little heavier on the one side, but how can she be sure? What if she is wrong and it isn’t him?

After a meaty smacking noise and a loud wuffing grunt, someone falls down the stairs, hard, and must hit every step on the way down and tear off the railing, too, from the sound of it. Maria can hear some cracking-popping noises in between the thumps, and then everything sounds very still for just a moment.

She starts sobbing softly in the closet, under the blankets, certain that she is next. There were three horrible thumping, groaning, breaking fights, and there are only three other people in the dacha. That leaves her. She’s next. It’s not the Soldier, and she’s next. She clamps her eyes shut as tight as they will go, and her chest heaves and heaves as she tries to stop crying so that they will not cut her tongue out of her mouth for making noise in the dark.

She hears footsteps upstairs in the attic, the sounds of things being moved around, scraping on the floor. Then the footsteps are coming down the stairs, and stepping around something before finally stopping outside the closet door. The chair drags away from the door, and then it isn’t dark in the closet anymore, but so bright that Maria’s eyes hurt from it, even though they’re shut tight enough to see spots.

When no one reaches in and grabs at her, Maria dares to open her eyes against the light, and she can’t say she was right, because she refused to hope for it, but there is the Soldier, crouched down low with his arms on his knees, his metal fingertips reflecting the light overhead. He doesn’t reach for her, doesn’t pull her out of the closet, doesn’t even say anything. He just looks at her, quiet and still and waiting, like a statue in color.

His eyes trail all along her arms and legs and the side of her head like he’s making a list of things that he very carefully has no external opinion about. She wonders how he does that, how he doesn’t frown at her or even wrinkle his nose up. She knows that she smells, because she wet herself and worse earlier and has had to sit in it for ages and ages, but it’s like he doesn’t notice it at all.

Maria blinks up at him as her eyes adjust to the light from the hallway, and he slowly comes into better focus like he was a far away bird she was looking at through the binoculars Grandfather let her hold once at the dacha, first a blur of color on a branch that could have been another apple, and then so clear she could see every red feather.

The Soldier has blood on his leather shirt, and a bit of blood on his cheek like a splash of paint. The little lines and creases of his metal fingers have red in them, some of it old and brownish, but it looks like he wiped the rest off on his pants. There is blood under his fingernails on his real hand. She remembers how carefully he helped her rinse her mouth out over the bucket in the orchard, and how worried he’d been about getting blood on her dress. He doesn’t seem to mind being bloody now. Maybe that’s because it’s him and not her.

He doesn’t say anything at first, and then he _keeps on_ not saying anything, but she’s never heard “you are safe” as loudly as she hears it now while his lips stay closed and his eyes settle on hers, gray-blue and filled with fierce affection. She is safe. He is here, and she is safe. He doesn’t have to say it. She knows. He _makes_ it safe, just by being there with her. If only there wasn’t a stupid little part of her still afraid even though he’s here.

She swallows, and her mouth is so dry that her throat catches on itself and she has try again before she can get her mouth to work right. “I bit down real hard,” she whispers, almost unable to hear her own words as they trip hesitantly from her cracked lips. She wants him to be proud of her. He taught her a thing, and she used it, and she wants him to think she did a good job. “And I meant it.”

He smiles at her, the tiny, secret smile that he only gives her when none of the grown-ups can see his face, and that lives more in his eyes than in his lips. “I saw his hand. I could tell.” The Soldier nods at her, approval in the set of his jaw, even if the smile in his eyes is sad and angry. “You did good, _myshka_ ,” he says.

It’s like she’s in the apple tree again, and she is too far up and can’t get down, and she will get in trouble for climbing the ladder when Grandmother told her not to, either a scolding or a spoon across her backside. But the Soldier reaches up and smiles with his eyes and pulls her down before putting a metal finger to his lips—their secret.

Or she’s sitting on the porch with her empty tummy and no snack until dinner because she was bad and got caught, but the Soldier sets a pair of Grandmother’s stolen cookies smeared with jam on the railing for her as he walks past on his way to the shed. And he must have been sneaky, because Grandmother never even noticed the missing cookies.

Maria throws herself out of the corner at him with a sob, her legs stiff and wobbly from the cold and being folded up for so long, her arms weak and her shoulder screaming at her, and he lifts her out of the darkness and holds her close to his chest with a feather-light breath shush-shushing against her hair.

“Shh, _moy myshka_. You did real good,” he says, his real fingers smoothing her hair down along the back of her head. “The bravest little mouse. The fiercest.” His metal arm braces under her legs to support her as he stands up, nudges the closet door closed with his heel, and then carries her into the front room of the dacha, where it’s warmer and she can hear a fire crackling in the fireplace.

Maria wants to keep her face buried in his shoulder, wants to cling to the solid, warm _safety_ of him until she can believe all over that no one will hurt her and the little frightened piece of her shuts up. But she also wants to see where she’s going. She couldn’t see in the trunk, and she couldn’t see in the closet, and she wants to _see_ , so she turns her face, resting her cheek against the leather still but looking out behind the Soldier as he walks.

The man with the lumpy potato face is sprawled out partly on the stairs and partly in a heap at the bottom. There are bits of splintered railing on top of him, and some sticking up out of him. His legs and the middle of his body are bent at weird angles, like he is a soft, stuffed doll that someone left in the grass and a big dog came and tore him up. His coat is wet, and more red than gray, and there is a rip partway up the front where the buttons should be holding it together. Some goopy gray-pink loops poke out from the rip, not looking at all like the fluffy stuffing a doll would have.

Maria can hear a little noise deep in the Soldier’s throat, and she looks at him and sees a tiny frown crawling across the Soldier’s lips, there and then gone as he turns slightly, taking the lumpy potato man out of her sight.

“You shouldn’t look at that,” he says softly, his breath light against her hair. “I should have cleaned it up before you saw.”

It occurs to Maria as she thinks about the broken man with the ripped tummy that she has been wrong about the Soldier all this time. The Soldier did _that_. He doesn’t just _look_ like a tiger. He really _is_ a tiger. A much bigger, meaner tiger than any of the men who said “bro.” Mama can see that he’s a tiger, and that is why she is afraid of him. That is why she thinks that he’s dangerous, thinks that he will kill them all and eat them right up.

And Mama’s right, the Soldier is definitely a tiger. Look at what he _did_.

But Mama is also wrong. She can’t see that he only bites other people, bad people. Maria doesn’t have to be afraid, and she isn’t. He would never bite _her_. She’s his brave little mouse. He wouldn’t eat her up.

There is another broken man half-leaning, half-slumping against the wall over a red puddle by the front door, holding onto a fireplace poker that sticks out of his belly. Maria sees him for just long enough to catch a glimpse at his mustache while the Soldier pours her a glass of water from the pitcher in the kitchen. She feels a lot better knowing that the man who wanted to cut her tongue out and make her grow up so fast is not going to be able to do that. Then the Soldier turns again, and is setting her down on the sofa and kneeling in front of her, holding her fingers around the glass until she has it gripped in her hands and won’t spill.

“Are all the bad men broken?” Maria swallows some of the water, coughs, and swallows a little more. She’s thirsty enough to want all of the water at once, but her throat is so dry it hurts to swallow still. “The ones who say ‘bro.’ Are they dead?”

The Soldier’s eyes look dark for a moment, an almost angry happiness dancing hard and bright inside them. “Not yet. They didn’t earn clean or quick. I’m going to make them wait.” He takes the glass from her after another sip and sets it aside. “You shouldn’t drink too much at once, _myshka_. Give it a few minutes, then drink more.” Then he’s standing up and going back to the kitchen, and the man who is stuck to the wall is groaning, so softly, saying “bro, bro,” and “please.”

Maria doesn’t know what the Soldier means to make them wait _for_ , exactly—though she has an idea about what it could be—and she still doesn’t know where the third man is, the one she bit, but even though there are three bad men in the dacha with them who are only broken and not all the way dead, she isn’t afraid at all, anymore, not even the little piece that was still nervous. The Soldier will not let them hurt her. The Soldier is her tiger, and he will keep her safe no matter what.

When he comes back, the Soldier sets a stack of towels and a ceramic basin of water down on the floor, and then slips off her shoes, helps her to stand, and kneels in front of her again. She remembers him kneeling to bandage her knee once, and to tie her shoelaces, and to dab at a splotch of motor oil on the hem of her dress so that Grandmother wouldn’t be angry, and to help her scramble up onto his shoulders. The Soldier is always kneeling, or close enough, when he’s looking after her. None of the other grown-ups do that, but he makes himself small for her.

The Soldier pulls a shiny black knife out from somewhere between all the leather and buckles on his shirt and cuts the handkerchief off from around her neck. The knife goes back inside afterward, or at least she thinks it does, because there’s nowhere else it could have gone. It’s like when Grandfather hands him a piece of paper, and the Soldier looks at it and then makes the paper disappear without moving his hands.

He helps her take off her coat, turning her around so that she doesn’t have to move her arms much, and then he helps her keep her balance as she works her soiled underthings down her legs one-handed—her winter tights and underwear both. She holds onto his metal shoulder for balance while he slips her tights the rest of the way off her feet, and he’s sturdier than any chair she’s leaned on. Sturdier and without a hint of disapproval.

Maria thought she would be ashamed to have messed herself when she’s a big girl, but the embarrassment doesn’t come. He piles up the soiled clothing inside the coat and rolls it up so that it doesn’t smell anymore, and his nose doesn’t wrinkle even once. Even his eyes aren’t disappointed with her or disgusted. She thinks her mama would have reminded her about being a lady, and her grandmother might have gotten out the big wooden spoon.

But the Soldier just moves on, looks very carefully at her arms and legs where the ropes cut in, turning them over in his hands and letting her hold onto him when he lifts her feet up one by one to see her ankles better. His metal fingers are cool against the red marks, and it feels good. It feels even better when the cool metal rests on the blotchy purple marks above her elbow where the lumpy potato man grabbed her so hard.

Her bruises and the red marks on her skin make the Soldier angry; she can tell. But he’s only angry up in his eyes, where he hides almost all of his expressions. Everywhere else, his face doesn’t move, just like when he looked at her in the closet. The Soldier is very good at not moving his face, and also at having whole conversations with just his eyes.

She learned the secret of how to listen to the Soldier’s eyes during her second summer at the dacha outside of Perm. Grandmother doesn’t know the secret, even though she orders the Soldier around and hits him when she feels like it, but Maria thinks Grandfather knows. Grandfather knows everything.

The Soldier runs gentle fingers along her shoulder over her dress, pressing so lightly that it doesn’t even hurt, and then helps her move it a little, this way and that, like he’s just making sure it works right. Then he stands up and tells her that he’s going outside to get her clean clothes out of the car, and while he’s there, she needs to wash up so that she will feel better. He tells her that he will help her wash her hair after, to get the blood out, but that she has to wash all the other bits by herself first—front and back, under her arms, between her legs.

“But it will hurt,” she says, wishing her words didn’t come out like a whine. She only means that her arm will hurt, her shoulder, even if it does work okay now. It still hurts, even when she’s being very still, and she knows that it will hurt even more if she tries to lift her arm up to get her dress off, or to reach her back or wash under her arms.

But the Soldier must think she means something else, because he is kneeling down again, looking at her with tiger eyes and holding himself very, very still, more still than usual. His metal arm makes the funny little purring sound under his sleeve that is not so funny right now, and for a moment, he is something bigger and meaner than even a tiger, and he looks like he wants to tear _everything_ into little tiny pieces. Everything but her.

“ _What_ will hurt, _myshka?_ ” he asks, in a voice that’s heavy, a voice that’s so carefully still the air seems to be moving with it. “ _Where_ will it hurt?”

“To lift my arms up and take my dress off,” she says. “So I can get clean.”

The Soldier is quiet for a bit, except for his metal arm, making decisions that even his eyes won’t tell her about, and then he finally nods, slow and careful, nothing at all like the sharp jerk of his chin that goes along with most of his replies to Grandfather. He reaches out his real hand to gently tuck a strand of hair, crunchy with blood, behind her ear, and then he lifts her chin up with his finger, looks into her eyes. “Your shoulder would hurt more,” he says, softly, carefully, like he’s tasting the words before saying them. “And your arm, up where the bruises are.”

She nods.

“And your wrists and ankles hurt,” he says, “where they tied the ropes.” And he is so soft. So careful. So quiet. Maybe he’s afraid. She doesn’t know what he looks like afraid, even when Grandmother is furious about curtains and taking it out on him. “Your face hurts, too, because they hit you and tied up your mouth.”

Maria nods again.

“ _Myshka_ , this next is a very important question,” the Soldier says, and Maria doesn’t know how his voice can sound like a feather drifting through the air, and also like a rock plunking deep into a lake, or how he can make his eyes so very, very loud. “Did they hurt you anywhere else?” His finger is so still under her chin that it’s like he isn’t touching her at all. “No one will be upset with you, either way. Did they hurt you between your legs? Did they hurt your bottom?”

“No,” she says. She shakes her head. She had hurt her knee falling out of the car when she first tried to get away, before they said that they would break her legs. But her knee doesn’t hurt as bad as her arm does, and she doesn’t think he’s asking about her knee. What he’s asking about… Is that what the “bro” men had been talking about? Is that how they would make her grow up fast? It doesn’t make sense, but she doesn’t think she should ask about it, since it upsets the Soldier so much. She doesn’t want him to be upset. It makes her sad when he’s upset.

He weighs up all her nods and words for long enough that she thinks maybe he doesn’t believe her, except that she wouldn’t lie to him. Not ever. And especially not when he asks a _very important question_.

“Good,” he says finally, and his eyes close just a little longer than a normal person would blink, and when they open again, they aren’t loud anymore, aren’t even tiger eyes at all, like the tiger inside went to sleep again. He doesn’t relax—she’s never seen him relaxed—but he’s normal again, normal for him, if still upset. “Let’s get your dress off, _myshka_. Here, turn around again. I’ll help you so it doesn’t hurt your shoulder, then you can do the rest.”

Then he’s slipping tiny buttons loose and untying ribbons like he does this all the time and not just sometimes in the summer when she has got mud everywhere and needs a new dress before Grandmother finds out. And he’s right—her shoulder doesn’t hurt at all when he guides her arm out of the sleeve. He rests his hand against her hair for a moment, murmurs softly that he will be back, and jostles the broken man by the door with his elbow—maybe on purpose—as he goes out to fetch her clothes.

Through the door, she can see snow falling. If her shoulder felt better, she could make a little snow Soldier for him. Maybe if she made a snow Soldier, her tiger would smile again.


	3. Myshka: Thank you, and thank you, and thank you

**—Dacha outside of Pereslavl-Zalessky: Early Saturday evening, 21 November, 1970—**

Maria doesn’t have to be small right now, doesn’t have to hide from any of the grown-ups in the dacha, doesn’t have to be still and quiet so no one will see her. But she still curls up small at the end of the sofa that’s nearest to the fire after the Soldier dragged it over to make her warm. For now, she just wants to be small, feels better that way.

Her hair is almost dry from sitting so close to the fire, and she has a cup of tea balanced on her knee with the jam already stirred in, and three _kara kum_ on the arm of the sofa. Real ones, with the camels on the wrapper, that the Soldier found in the kitchen. She’s never gotten to eat an entire _kara kum_ by herself, and now she has three of them. Even if it’s not a house they’re supposed to be in, the Soldier knows where the best snacks are.

She tries to make the _kara kum_ last, taking only a very small bite and then letting the wafers and chocolate melt on her tongue before taking the next bite. It’s very relaxing being in front of the warm fire with its dancing flames, curled up on a soft, blanket-lined cushion and leaning into the arm at the end of the sofa, with her tea and her _kara kum_.

She can hear the dragging sounds in the rest of the dacha, where the Soldier is moving all the broken men into the bedroom so that she will not have to look at them. One of the men is still groaning “bro, bro, please” while he is dragged away, but the other two are silent. Maria wonders how long the Soldier will make them wait.

Then there’s splashing in the fresh basin of wash water he’d drawn after rinsing her hair, and the clanking of a pot on the stove. There’s the hiss of gas, the scratch of a match, and then _whoosh_ as the stove lights, and the Soldier is moving things around in the cupboard, looking for something. Maria wonders if he will find more _kara kum_ , thinks about getting down off the sofa and offering him one of hers. She has three, after all. There’s plenty to share, and the Soldier found her when no one knew where she was. He should be able to eat a _kara kum_ , too. Then there’s more water, the smell of oats starting to boil, and the sound of a wooden spoon scraping the sides of a metal pot.

The Soldier is making her dinner.

Maria’s tummy grumbles at the thought, and she crams the rest of her first _kara kum_ into her mouth all at once. It’s not so bad to eat it fast, since she still has two left that she can take her time on. And just thinking about dinner has made her very hungry again. The candy is rich and sweet, and she swallows the last of her tea to help wash it down. She should save one for the Soldier. Maybe save them both, and they can be dessert after dinner. That’s what she’ll do. She’ll stay on the sofa for now, because she can be small on the sofa, and then after dinner, she will give the Soldier back one of the _kara kum_.

It’s only a few minutes later that the stove clicks off. The Soldier stirs a few more times, and there’s metal on metal, the pot being moved off the heat. She listens to the Soldier setting things down on the table with light thumps that Maria would miss except that she’s paying close attention. Then there’s thick _kasha_ going into a bowl, and a spoon scraping against a pot, and the Soldier’s voice, soft and careful, like he’s trying not to startle her, “ _Myshka_ , come eat your dinner, please.”

Maria uncurls and slides down off the sofa, bringing her _kara kum_ and her teacup and saucer with her so that they don’t get knocked to the floor. It’s very bad to break dishes, even if they aren’t her family’s dishes. She puts them on the table and climbs up into the chair in front of the bowl of _kasha_ , and the Soldier fills her teacup up and adds a spoonful of jam from the jar.

She looks at the table and frowns. One bowl, filled up and steaming and smelling sweet and creamy. One teacup, filled up and steaming and smelling like raspberries. One spoon, resting on top of one napkin. A second spoon, cooling the tea. There’s only enough here for one person, but there are two people in the dacha. She isn’t counting the broken men who say “bro.” The Soldier put them away in the bedroom, and so they don’t matter any more.

“Where’s your dinner?” she asks, looking up at the Soldier. How can she share the _kara kum_ for dessert if the Soldier doesn’t eat with her?

“I don’t need to eat dinner,” he says, like he’s telling her that lakes freeze over in the winter. “That’s for people to do. You should blow on that before you eat it,” he says with a little nod at her bowl. “It’ll be hot.” And then he’s back in front of the stove again with his back to her, wiping out the pot with a rag he dunked in the bucket of wash water.

“You’ll be hungry, though,” she says, picking up her spoon and stirring it through the bowl. Maybe he ate on his way to the dacha. But that was a really long drive, and he would have been with Grandfather before that, even farther away. She tries to think back to all the times she’s been around him, the summers spent with her grandparents and the shorter visits throughout the year, whether he ate with them at all, and can’t remember him doing so. She can’t even remember him being at the table while they ate, since Grandmother would always shoo him off so that they could eat in peace.

“Without you looming there,” Grandmother would say, and then she’d hit him with the spoon, hard, wherever she could reach. The Soldier had never flinched back from it, even though he seemed to see it coming. Maria had always assumed he ate later, or maybe just somewhere else. She knows that he doesn’t sleep the way other people sleep. It makes sense that he wouldn’t eat the same way. And Grandmother is always quick with the spoon. But Grandmother isn’t here, and Maria would never hit him with a spoon. He doesn’t have to eat later, or somewhere else. He can eat now, with her.

The Soldier hangs the pot up with all the others, puts the rag back in the bucket to wash up with after she finishes eating, and only then comes to stand near her. “I won’t be hungry,” he says finally. “You shouldn’t worry about me. Do you need anything else, _myshka?_   I need to tell your family that you’re safe.”

Maria thinks that he will go in a different room, once she answers. That as soon as she says she has everything she needs, he will go away so that he doesn’t loom. But she doesn’t want him to go away. She feels safer when he’s there, whether he looms or doesn’t. And he gave her tea and _kara kum_ and _kasha_ , and she hasn’t given him anything but trouble. That’s not fair. At least she can give him some dinner. She won’t be mean to him like Grandmother is.

“You have to be hungry, though. So you need to eat some dinner,” she says, folding her arms. How does Grandfather make the Soldier do things? Could she do that? Maybe not. But she can try to sound like Uncle Volodya when he puts on the handler voice. “I _want_ you to eat some dinner, Soldier.” And then, when he frowns at her, she tries again. “Please.”

The frown remains. She doesn’t understand why he won’t eat dinner with her. There’s enough. She wants to do something nice for him. And he always does what Grandfather tells him to do. And Uncle Volodya, too. Even Uncle Sasha, who is meaner than Grandmother, would be able to get him to eat dinner. She tries on Grandmother’s tone. “Eat, Soldier,” she snaps, trying for irritable even if she doesn’t feel it, and—for a horrible moment—succeeding.

At first, Maria thinks that he will frown harder, that he will tell her no, that he might even scold her for telling a grown-up like him what to do. But he just sighs, and says “if that’s what you want, _myshka_ ,” and bends closer to eat a spoonful of _kasha_ , and then another, and then a third. His eyes are dark, and sad, and hurt, and they say “is that good enough for you?” while the rest of his face says nothing.

Maria suddenly feels very, very guilty, like she’s a bad person for making him do something he didn’t want to do, for trying to use the handler voice, for imitating Grandmother even though she wants to help and not smack him with a spoon. Before she can say she’s sorry, he stands up straight again and hands her back her spoon, sliding its handle between her fingers with the lightest of touches until he is sure she won’t drop it.

“I will be in the next room talking to your family if you need anything, _myshka_. Just call out. After, I’ll come back here to watch over you.” He smooths her hair lightly with his real hand, and she feels like she’s been forgiven already, without even having to ask. “When you finish your dinner, please go to the sofa in front of the fire and try to sleep.”

Maria watches him go through the door to the room where he put all the broken men, and watches the door close behind him. There’s a soft click as it shuts, and Maria feels a little alone as she sits at the table. She drinks some tea and then starts eating like she was told. It doesn’t taste like her mama’s, and not just because it’s oats and not buckwheat. It’s a lot sweeter than her mama would ever make it, and it tastes like vanilla and hazelnut instead of butter. It’s very good, though, and it’s hot and smooth, and she feels a lot better once it’s inside. She finishes the bowl faster than she thought she could.

Maybe the Soldier was right about how much there was.

Maria gets up to take her bowl around to the kitchen, and can hear a little bit of what is behind the door to the other room. It sounds like the Soldier is being sick, and Maria feels even worse about making him eat some of her dinner, but then he is rinsing his mouth out and spitting, and then he says, with a scratchy voice, “Winter Soldier for the General,” and Maria knows that he hasn’t called her parents at all, but is talking to Grandfather.

She puts her bowl down quickly and goes to the sofa so that she doesn’t hear the rest of it. There are some things that have to stay secret, and mission reports are on that list up near the top, right after the fact of the Soldier himself. Some secrets—like the Soldier—are kept by the family so that other people don’t know about them. Other secrets—like what the Soldier _does_ —are for Grandfather alone, or just for Grandfather and Uncle Volodya. Not even Papa gets to know what is said in a mission report.

And he had said that she shouldn’t look at the broken men, earlier. That he should have cleaned them all up. But she did look, did see. She already knows more than she is supposed to about what the Soldier does.

She pulls down the blanket from the back of the sofa, drags it over her aching shoulder and around the rest of her. The Soldier asked her to sleep after eating. She doesn’t think she can sleep, even with the Soldier right there, just a door away and reporting to Grandfather. If she sleeps, what if she wakes up and the Soldier was a dream? What if she wakes up and there’s not a fire at all, but just cold and dark and fear?

What if she sleeps and wakes up all alone? Or in the closet? Or in the trunk?

Maria curls up a little tighter on the cushions, looks into the fire, and reminds herself that the Soldier came for her once, and he will come for her again if she wakes up alone. He got her down out of a tree, and he got her up out of a little closet. He fed her cookies and jam and _kara kum_ and _kasha_. He helped her keep blood off her dress before, and helped her get blood out of her hair now. The Soldier is a constant, even if he sometimes sleeps for a whole week, and now she knows that he will be there for her, even when Grandfather isn’t around.

The fire is warm and lulling, and the blanket gives her fingers something to latch onto, and her tummy is full of _kasha_ and tea, and her eyes finally give up and drift closed. For a while, she listens to the crackle of the fireplace and floats on a warm cloud of exhaustion, fluffy and squeezing her slowly into sleep.

Then, the men come.

They say “bro” and grab at her and twist her arms, and she tries to bite them, but she has no teeth. She has no teeth, and so she gums at them, leaving messy red half-circles where her bleeding mouth closes on their hands and arms, and they laugh and laugh. “You have no teeth, bro,” they say. “You’re going to grow up so fast, bro. So fast.”

She struggles to escape, tries to find a way out, tries to bite and bite even though her mouth hurts so bad without her teeth. She yells and cries and begs them not to break her legs or cut out her tongue, and they laugh, and laugh, and _laugh_.

They tie her up tight, wrap her up in a tarp, and say that they will take her away forever, bro. She’ll never see her mama or her papa again, never see her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, her cousins, the Soldier. She’ll be alone and cold and in the dark forever. They laugh so much, and say they will cut all her fingers off, bro, and then her toes.

Her flailing arms finally come free from the ropes, escape the tarp and catch against something soft, the stack of blankets in the closet, so cold and dark, and they will take a knife and cut out her tongue if she cries, but she can’t keep quiet. She panics, she grabs and clutches at the blankets, tries to dig under them, find a door, find a way out, but then her fingers come up against something much harder, not soft at all, and at first she thinks it’s the trunk again, or the closet wall.

But then she smells leather and metal, and knows it’s the Soldier. He gathers her up in his arms and makes low, soft noises in his throat, and Maria digs her fingers in between the leather straps that cross his chest, and grabs on, clinging and burying her face against him as she cries and cries. The Soldier will not let them cut her, will not let them laugh, will not let them even say “bro.”

The Soldier is her tiger, and she is his little mouse. He will break anyone who wants to hurt her, and will drag them away so that she doesn’t even have to look at them. The Soldier will keep her safe.

She feels herself lifted up high, and then lowered again with the sound of a sofa cushion shifting under weight, but the strong arms around her don’t let her fall. Instead, they stay, solid and even warmer than the fire, and she’s in the dacha, the one with the broken men who said “bro” before the Soldier stopped them. She’s got her teeth again, and there are no ropes, there is no tarp, there’s only the Soldier and the fire and she’s floating on the warm cloud again, tired but safe.

The cloud is the Soldier’s arms, and she’s rocked gently one way and then the other, just a little, just the tiniest of a sway, and the Soldier’s voice is a low, distant rumble in his chest that she can feel against her cheek where she’s curled up against him on the sofa.

Maria doesn’t know the tune he sings, and the words don’t sound at all like they should. _It’s not Russian_ , she thinks. Papa says things sometimes in a language that sounds like this, in English, but when Papa says things in English, he’s talking in business, all blunt and clipped and impatient. The Soldier sounds soft and smooth, all the words running together and stretched out all at once.

The Soldier’s words are never impatient, even when he speaks Russian like everyone else. The Soldier speaks softly, and calmly, and weighs out all his words like he’ll run out if he says too many at once and he’s got to make them last. But he always shares his words with her, taking his time, making sure she knows what he means without acting like she’s too little to understand. But in English—when he _sings_ —it isn’t just that he takes his time and gives it to her along with his attention. It’s like he has time _only_ for her and not for anyone else. She’s never heard him sing before, didn’t know he could do it, but it’s… _It’s nice_ , Maria thinks.

All the leftover panic from before, the fear she felt when the men said “bro,” it all gets covered up and pushed out of the way by the Soldier’s voice singing the English words in the tune she’s never heard before, and she’s left with just waves of safety and warmth rocking her back and forth on the sofa in front of the fire until her breathing evens out again, her fingers start to relax their hold on the straps of his shirt, and she’s filled with absolute certainty that _nothing_ can hurt her now.

 

* * *

 

**—Route M8 toward Moscow: Late Saturday night, 21 November, 1970—**

When Maria wakes up, she’s moving again, and it’s dark, but not like the inside of the trunk or in the closet. This is just nighttime dark, and the moon is shining bright and silver in the sky just above the treetops in the distance.

She is slumped against the door of a different car than the one the bad men took her away in, and she’s bundled up snug and warm, with her head pillowed on a folded up coat and a seat belt tucked around her in just exactly the right way to not pinch her neck. The blower in the front of the car is sending warm air rushing out at her, and her eyes feel heavy from sleep and from the heat, like she’s still in front of a fire even though she’s really in a car.

She looks over at the Soldier, sees the silver glint of moonlight off the tops of his metal fingers on the wheel, and the smile in his eyes when he glances over at her. He doesn’t have blood on his hands or his cheek or anywhere now, not even on the leather of his shirt or the sides of his pants. Maria wonders if he brought clean clothes for himself as well as the clean dress and underthings and coat for her.

“We’re almost there, _myshka_ ,” he says softly, like he doesn’t want to disturb the silence in the car or speak over the sound of the road steadily disappearing under them. “Try to get some more sleep.”

She lets herself settle back against the door, snuggling her cheek into the soft bundle of the coat. Her eyes are heavy, and she aches all over, but in a dull, sleepy kind of way and not the sharp, stabby way she did earlier. “Will you sing some more?” She likes asking him for things a lot better than trying to use the handler voice to make him do things. She doesn’t want to ever tell him what to do again.

“Okay,” he says, and then he does.

It’s another new tune, another song she doesn’t know and has never heard, but this one doesn’t seem to have any words at all. The Soldier’s soft, low humming replaces the sound of the road under the car, the feeling of the heater blowing air at her, the dull achy feeling. For a long time, his humming is all she knows until she’s being lifted up again, and then settled into another soft place that smells like home, and warm lips are pressed against the top of her head, and the Soldier’s voice comes even softer than before, saying “sleep safe, _moy myshka_.”

Then there is her mama, her mama’s perfume and the smell of lavender, her mama’s hands smoothing her hair and trembling on every pass, her mama’s voice shaking and soft and saying “thank you,” and “thank you,” and “ _thank you_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes Maria's POV chapters. Next up... we jump back in time a couple days to catch the Soldier's POV!


	4. Soldat: Astral projection and other garbage facts

* * *

_When everyone was sleeping_  
_Then came a hungry cat._  
_He ate up all the small mice_  
_And a chubby passing rat._  
_But no one has to worry._  
_No one needs to cry._  
_They all soared up to heaven_  
_To the mansion in the sky._

— _Musevisa_ (“The Mouse Song”)

 

* * *

 

**—KGB facility outside of Perm: Friday evening, 20 November 1970—**

It is hot.

And it hurts.

Clench jaw, bite into rubber, tighten throat, do not scream.

_Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Don’t scream._

_Mind on something else._

It’s possibly the hottest he’s ever been. Definitely the hottest he can remember ever being.

It’s absolutely _not_ the worst he’s ever hurt, though. _That_ is reserved forever for the month-long upgrade to the Arm that he endured one October some… (five? seven?—doesn’t matter; _what_ matters more than _when_ ) …some number of years back that he has never been permitted to forget beyond his inability to pin it down to a definite year. 60-something. He would shrug if he could move his shoulders.

There are not many things he actually _tries_ to forget. He usually puts a lot of secret effort into remembering what happens to him, even if he inevitably can’t stop them from taking things away and burning holes in his timeline. The month they spent upgrading the Arm is…

He _would_ forget that, entirely, if given a choice. He remembers asking—begging, if he’s going to be honest with himself—for them to erase that month, to take that month away. They had made him keep it. Sometimes that month—that-man-those-glasses-the-bow-tie—is all he can think about in the cold, when he’s locked up deep in the frosty paralysis of cryofreeze, his mind the only part of him still able to move, and the fool thing flying circles around his misery like a starving, concussed vulture.

He thinks the heat might be coming from the lights above him, so bright that the photons—he read that somewhere, read that light is made out of tiny things called “photons,” maybe the way that beaches are made out of tiny dead sea creatures… The photons, though, are molten heat drumming against his eyelids, which are shut tight against the thundering white of pain-heat-bright, and against everything else that is his body.

He doesn’t remember where or when he read that, about the photons, or if he read it at all and didn’t just overhear one of the medical team talking over him. He picks up a lot of garbage facts from support team chatter—things that are pointless-useless-trivial, but that are _his_ once he hears them—and he keeps these garbage facts to himself so they don’t take them away from him.

Swallow the scream, choke on the noise before it gets out.

_Don’t scream. Don’t scream, don’t— Mind on something else._

It’s just as possible, though, that the heat is coming from the drug, and the fire isn’t made of photons at all, but chemicals scalding their way through his flesh to the surface from where they’ve been poured into his veins, a volcano in reverse, pumping viscous glowing rock and blistering toxic fumes back into the magma chamber, through the lava tubes that run through his body. His blood feels fizzy, carbonated, all the way to his fingertips.

He learned about volcanoes from the engineering team. One of the engineers had said he’d wanted to be a geologist and explore “continental drift,” but it turned out the perks were better in engineering, so he’d spoken to a well-connected cousin and jumped ship to a different department. “Anyway,” he had said to his colleague over the Soldier’s head as he fitted a new wire in place, “engineers don’t disappear as often as academics do, you know.”

The Soldier _had_ known, yes. He’d made loads of academics disappear by that point.

“And,” the engineer had said, “the Arm is almost as interesting as plate tectonics, so it’s not a real loss.”

The Soldier never did learn what “plate tectonics” were before that engineer had been transferred, though he’d listened very carefully trying to find out more. The Arm is covered with moving plates. He thinks there is a connection there. Maybe. He is fully aware of how often he is wrong. But plate tectonics have not featured in any of the mental-stimulation reading materials the General has given him, so he might never know for sure.

It is hot, and everything hurts, and he’s going to die.

He’ll die silently, though, if he has anything to _not_ say about it. The medical team had requested silence during the very first round, two days ago, when the pain had taken him by surprise—so much worse than the usual drug trials—and he had screamed. They’d requested silence, and he has _absolutely_ learned to be as accommodating as possible— _more_ accommodating than possible—for the various support teams that surround him.

Except the HYDRA teams. He can’t help himself when he knows the technicians are HYDRA.

It’s not so much that his self-control slips when the personnel are HYDRA; it’s more that he has no will in the first place to control an outburst that stands any reasonable chance of injuring a member of fucking HYDRA. They just invite that sort of behavioral malfunction by _being_ HYDRA. It’s in their nature or in his. The General never approves outright when he snaps and snarls at the HYDRA support teams, doesn’t flagrantly encourage him, but he doesn’t seem too eager to correct those glitches, either, and that is a form of encouragement all on its own.

He responds well to encouragement of all sorts, when the General is the source.

The other support teams, though, the ones he knows aren’t HYDRA, _they_ get accommodation, compliance, whenever he can manage it. Compliance means everything is over faster. At least, that’s the general rule of thumb. It’s not working so well this time. This has been going on for… He doesn’t know how long today’s testing has been going on. Too long. They could take a break or something. He really would not mind.

 _He is going to die_. This will be what kills him. They are finally doing it, finally going too far, pushing too hard, putting his body through too much for it to fight back, and he is finally going to _die_. This might be the single—

His limbs jerk against the restraints, just another involuntary spasm, but hard enough for metal and leather to cut into flesh. He hasn’t been in control of his body since they started this series of tests—in control of his limbs, anyway; he’s been very good about maintaining a scream-free work environment for the various rotating medical teams.

His movement is followed by a round of vaguely disappointed and only partially intelligible muttering from the current medical team.

_—Unsuccessful._

_—Another failure._

_—More testing needed._

_—It’s like he’s doing this on purpose._

He isn’t. He’d _swear_ that he isn’t, but even more than not doing this on purpose, whatever “this” is, he knows that he shouldn’t be making noise.

_—Be here all night at this rate. I want to sleep._

_—Start it again._

_Or_ , he thinks at them with a savagery usually reserved for HYDRA teams but drawn out for this team out of frustration and pain, _you can_ not _start it again. Be lazy for a change, you sadists. There’s always tomorrow. What’s your fucking rush._ This isn’t HYDRA. He knows it isn’t. But they have borrowed whole chapters out of HYDRA’s book. If it wasn’t the Perm base, he’d suspect Lieutenant Lukin was in the observation room, grinning.

The pain- _heat_ -bright is exchanged for pain- _cold_ -bright, a shift that rivals the sudden shock of cryofreeze except that it’s only the sensation of becoming a block of ice and not the reality. The start-over formula that puts everything back how it was so fast he gets chemical whiplash. The precursor to another fucking round of testing just a few minutes away.

He. Is going. To die. And this might be the single best thing that has ever happened to him. He cannot _wait_ to die. He’d had no idea he was looking forward to it so much until it was actually happening.

Or it _would_ be the single best thing, except it isn’t a single thing, best or otherwise. It’s a series of things that keep happening.

It’s not an event at all, but an ongoing pileup of events, a repetitive cycle, never ending, and as much as he might anticipate finally dying  _this_ time, he knows that’s wishful thinking. He survives everything. At this point, he probably _can’t_ die. All he can do is go around and around, pulled along by the medical team’s circular experimentation.

He can’t even tell what they’re trying to achieve with this formula. Maybe nothing. Maybe he’s just been receiving behavioral correction so long he’s forgotten what he did that prompted it. That _has_ happened before. Usually with the Lieutenant. But this is the base near Perm, so… not that handler.

_—Record baseline stats. Announce formula number._

_—Depress plunger. Send rivers of incandescent misery along the lava tubes of his body._

_—Start clock. Announce time._

_—Record stats. Record stats. Record stats._

_—Tighten restraints._

_—Mutter about failure._

_—Stop clock. Announce time._

_—Flush the veins with ice-but-not-ice to neutralize the formula._

_—Wait for baseline._

_—Record baseline stats. Announce…_

It is unending, except for the intervals between tests, the time it takes to send the “palate cleanser” (laughter from the team, comments about wine and cheese and grapes) through the cannula in his flesh arm, the time it takes to resume baseline. Sometimes 10 minutes. Sometimes 7 minutes. Sometimes 12 minutes. Once, 43 minutes, when the current medical team took a lunch break and did _not_ flush the test formula out with whatever it is that feels like ice but isn’t.

During those 43 minutes, _they_ had eaten _golubtsy_ —he knows because they complained about the cafeteria’s soggy cabbage and the lack of alternatives when they returned, and then made the joke he did not understand about tasting wine and then spitting it out like a capitalist, after they realized they had forgotten to flush the test formula out of his blood.

Did the capitalists really do that, spit out wine they enjoyed? Were they _so_ very wasteful?

During those 43 minutes, _he_ had chewed right through the rubber mouth guard that protects his teeth, while he tried and—distressingly— _failed_ to move his fingers. The metal fingers had worked. The flesh ones had not. It had been a horrible, terrifying thing when the Arm was the only functioning part of him. It had played the whole reel of images behind his eyes of the October upgrade— _that_ man, _those_ glasses, the _bow tie_ —happening to his entire body.

 _That_ , he would not survive. _That_ , he would never be able to come back from. And it would _not_ be the best thing that happened to him, even if it did kill him.

This is—he _thinks,_ but is not sure—the ninth variation on the formula they have tested today. The ninth that he remembers, anyway. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth round of testing _that he_ _remembers_ —the rounds after the lunch break and the flood of existential dread at the prospect of having _all_ of his bones taken out and replaced, and not just his left ribs—somewhere between there, he… went away, somewhere.

He doesn’t know how many iterations they went through while his body was on the table but he was absent from inside it. He doesn’t know where he went, either. Just that he doesn’t have that time, the time when he was both on the table and also somewhere else. No one took it, with the halo or the… He swallows. Or the _other_ device. No one took that time; it just fell out on its own.

They’ll have written it down in their notes, recorded it. They’ll play it back at some point to do comparisons—with two sets of medical teams, comparison of notes is critical—and if he’s lucky and pays attention, and if he can remember it afterward, then he’ll know all about what happened when he wasn’t really there.

_Don’t scream. Don’t scream._

_Mind on something else._

That’s called an “out of body experience” or “astral projection,” when you are not in your body. It’s difficult to achieve, according to a member of the medical team who was training to “travel the astral plane” and who is no longer with them after attempting to smuggle project files out to the Americans. He supposes she finally had her long-awaited out of body experience when he caught up to her in Minsk.

She had said, back while she was on the team, that an “astral traveler” could hear “the music of the spheres” and “cleanse” something called a “chakre.” He wonders if she heard music when he shot her in the back of the head, and whether she left her chakre neat and tidy when she took her leave of absence from this world. He doubts it. She hadn’t left the sidewalk very tidy.

“—care whether this is the most promising round yet. You can repeat it later. I need him. Get him up. _Now_.”

The General. The words are just sounds at the moment, don’t have meaning yet—nothing means anything while he’s drowning in pain-heat-bright, tossed about on wave after wave of light too hot and painful to endure, except that he doesn’t have the option of doing anything _but_ enduring it, over and over again—but the words don’t have to have meaning. They are _his_ words. The General’s words. In the General’s voice.

Nothing in this world matters as much as the General’s words.

It occurs to him that perhaps the General has come to watch him die. He scoffs, deep inside his head where no one will know. That would an unnecessarily wasteful use of the General’s remaining time, and in any case, the Soldier knows he doesn’t deserve that kindness. Hasn’t done anything to merit curling up at the General’s feet and dying like a loyal hound. There is still work to do.

And even if there wasn’t work to do, even though he would die for the General anywhere, for any reason, it’s not at all in keeping with the General’s pattern to have him die like this, in the center of a cluster of medical staff all vying for the best view of the monitors displaying his heart rate, breathing, blood-oxygen saturation, muscle tension…

_—Announcement of time._

_—Depressed plunger. Ice in the blood._

_—Muscle spasms, involuntary, minimal._

_—Creaking of leather where restraints are unbuckled from around ankles, knees, right arm, neck._

_—Grinding of metal on metal where restraint is unlatched from around left arm._

_—Latex-sheathed fingers digging in his mouth, stealing the rubber from between his clenched teeth._

His mouth feels empty. His blood fizzes and hisses and pops inside his veins. He is… _not_ dying.

He tries not to be disappointed. Partially succeeds. The General is there and that helps.

There is medical babble overhead as he focuses on the chill rushing through his limbs and on the tingling knowledge-sensation-awareness that he _could_ move them again, if he is asked to. None of the medical team’s chatter is interesting enough to join the other garbage facts in his collection, so he discards it and strains his ears to hear the General’s voice again. The General’s voice makes everything okay, stable, _right_.

Somehow, while his limbs tremble with returned function and the fire ebbs out of his veins under the rush of ice, his lungs and throat conspire against him to release a groan. They hadn’t managed to overcome his rigid control before this, not even during hours upon hours of testing.

He feels a flash of shame, that his control failed him while the General is there to observe.

But there isn’t much time to dwell on his shame (and in any case, the General doesn’t seem to care whether he made a sound or not, because the General is kind sometimes, when the situation warrants it), because now the General’s words _do_ mean something, and he would hang on the General’s every word even without the programming.

“Good evening, Soldier,” the General says, his voice smooth-low-steady. Calming and energizing, all at once.

The Soldier fills up with the words he can’t speak yet, the words that it’s not time for, that he doesn’t have permission to give voice to. They beat at him from inside, clawing their way up his throat, and he very carefully says nothing at all, even more carefully keeps the smile off his lips and the instinctive craning of his neck in check—he would turn his head toward the General like a sunflower in a summer field if he let himself.

The General leans over the table, filling his vision as the Soldier blinks up. The General’s features are stern-grave-urgent, his cheeks red—maybe with wind and cold? is it winter?—his coat collar still turned up and its fur dotted with glistening droplets of… rain? Snowmelt? Maybe it’s winter. Or maybe it’s just raining.

He realizes that sometime in the last several minutes—minutes he seems to be missing, but that’s not unusual—the medical team flicked the surgical lights off, probably to protect the General’s eyes. He approves of that. The General is getting so old, and his eyes aren’t what they used to be. If he remembers after prep, he will thank them for turning the lights off.

It… _is_ going to be prep, next. He thinks. Hopes. That’s what comes after being greeted like that, if he’s already awake and thawed out when it’s time for him to be useful. If he’s had to be woken up, pulled out of the cryochamber, then he’s allowed to speak right after the greeting and designation, can say his words because the General will have already read from the red book. But he is already awake. He has to wait.

That’s protocol. Cryofreeze to chair with halo and words, then he can speak after just a greeting. Already warmed through, and he has to wait for the mission. He knows protocol like he knows the direction of sunrise and sunset. It is one of the constants, the things he can count on. Even if it means he has to wait to say his words.

And the General makes him wait, inspecting his body with a frown for several minutes before he draws a folded piece of paper from an inner pocket of his coat and says the words that will unlock the response of the call-and-response protocol, says the words he’s desperate to hear again.

“I have a mission for you.”

Oh, _oh_ and he can _feel_ the cogs slotting into place in the machinery of his mind. The appropriate response bubbles up to his lips and fills up the space left abandoned by his stolen mouth guard. No amount of stiffness in his jaw from hours of clenching it against pain could keep him silent now, and the stifling incorporeal gag of _not-allowed_ , of _keep-quiet_ , of _be-silent_ has been lifted.

He’s _allowed_ to say his words now, allowed to participate in the call-and-response, allowed to slide himself fully into usefulness and put on whatever purpose the General is offering. He cannot keep the tiny smile from his lips as he sits up and takes the paper, and he doesn’t even try: the General appreciates enthusiasm more and more as he ages.

“I am ready to comply.”

 

* * *

 

He’s not ready to comply.

That is to say, he’s utterly willing and entirely compliant, but he’s also a filthy mess after spending the better part of two days sweating on an exam table and cutting up his ankles and one wrist when the drugs made him convulse and strain unwillingly against his restraints. He thinks a tooth might be loose, too, though he has no idea why. Maybe that happened while he was “traveling the astral plane” or whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’ll sort itself out in time. Everything does.

So he’s ready to _get ready_ to comply. Ready for prep. Ready for the chair and the halo and the words from the book, specifically, but that’s not where things are heading.

He has a moment of panic when he realizes that no one is following the protocols—there is something new, something different, therefore something _bad;_ it’s always _bad_ when it deviates from normal—but he’s an old hat at this. It’s not simple, but he knows what to do: fake it. _Pretend_.

Pretend he knows what’s happening until he _does_ know what’s happening. Don’t make confused eyes. Don’t take a step toward the chair— _don’t-even-_ look _-at-the-chair!_ —when the prep team is steering him toward the corner with the tile and hoses instead. They don’t want him in the chair, and so he’s not going in the chair. They’re going to hose him off first.

That’s fine.

It’s not protocol, but it’s fine.

They’ll have to do it again, after the chair. That’s _why_ it’s not protocol. That’s _why_ the chair comes first, and the halo.

But it’s _fine_.

It’s fine, because _now_ he knows what they’re doing. He has pretended, and it has worked. It always works, except when it doesn’t.

Anyway, now that he _does_ know what is happening, it’s simple again. He can bring up the folded paper in his mind while the prep team unzips the sleeveless vest he wears on base so that he will always be ready for the cryochamber. He can unfold it in his mind while holding his arms straight and slightly back so that they can peel the fabric off him. He can study the picture on the paper in his mind while the prep team unzips the matching pants and tugs the fabric down.

He doesn’t have the paper anymore—the General took it back and might return it when he’s fully prepped for the mission—but he can see the photograph still, as he steps backward out of the pants, _away_ from the prep team, because crowding their space is how to get a cattle prod to the gut. Everyone knows that.

He shuts his eyes against the splash of soap, holds out his hand for the dollop of shampoo, rubs it into his hair, braces for the hose and the cold, pressurized water. Sometimes he’s allowed to do this himself, with a washcloth. He prefers that, if he’s in the mood to admit that he still has preferences, even after… everything. But they’re in a hurry, that much is clear. This is much faster.

It was a photograph of a little girl. The General called her Maria Dmitrievna Karpova. That makes her… (Someone barks out an order to turn, and he turns—they are in a hurry; no one here has time for a cattle prod.) …the General’s granddaughter, then. She’s familiar. He’d swear he’s never laid eyes on her, but she is _so_ familiar. He must have. He nudges at his memories, poking lightly and hoping something splits off and allows an inspection.

Does he remember this one? He thinks he must, for her to be so familiar. If he sees her, he will remember her. That is the way it goes. Some people, he doesn’t remember until he sees them. Then it all comes back, in a flash. Sometimes that _sucks_. But she’s so little. There can’t be very much of her in his brain to start off with, so it shouldn’t be too bad if he remembers her all of a sudden. Certainly not bad enough to put a mission objective in jeopardy.

The prep team moves in closer, swiping perfunctorily down his shivering arms, torso, legs with towels. He ignores them, other than to hold himself as still and docile as he can—there really is no time for discipline, if the mission involves the General’s granddaughter.

She has defiant eyes. And a chin that says she will refuse to comply if she doesn’t _want_ to comply, even if she knows that will hurt her. Her hair is blonde, and in the picture, she has pulled half of it out of a pair of elaborate braids that someone spent a lot of time on. The remaining braid is very well-braided. Someone was definitely cross when their work was undone, but he suspects the girl did not care about that. Her eyes are too fierce. They fight you, even from the paper, if you try to put her into the sweet little girl category. He likes her. She is very familiar. He hopes that he will remember her when he sees her.

“Leave it.”

The General’s voice again. He’s back. The Soldier’s head swivels toward him, a force of habit he forgets to correct for, and he gets a towel to the face for the effort before the prep tech is taking a giant step away, spooked by his sudden movement and the unexpected contact.

“It’ll dry on the helicopter,” the General says, gruff, impatient.

Then it’s on with the tac gear—another thing he’s sometimes allowed to do for himself, putting on clothing, like a person might. This is actually quicker to do himself, and so they shove a stack of fabric and leather into his arms and he follows the General from the tiled corner with the hoses to the table with the mission briefing spread out, speedily pulling things on as he walks, buckling them tight, tugging on fingerless gloves.

This is not protocol, either. He has not sat in his chair. The halo has not come down. No one has read the words from the book. But he doesn’t have to pretend. There are papers spread on the table where mission briefing materials go, and that means it is time for a mission briefing. Maybe the halo will come down after? Maybe… the words…?

The back of his neck is wet from the drip-drip-drip of water from his hair. It doesn’t matter, though. It will dry on the helicopter. The General said so.

He trusts the General.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s Musevisa again. This one is the second alternate ending, with a cat who is much less into the spirit of Christmas. 
> 
> If you want to hear the tune, you can do so [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeiXN8k_mIg).


	5. Soldat: The shape of who she is

**—Above an airfield in Moscow: Saturday morning, 21 November 1970—**

So it _is_ winter. He hadn’t known that. Not for sure, even with the General’s coat and red cheeks. It’s winter, but not snowing, not raining. Just stupidly cold. A brief mote of thought drifts by, wondering whether there was a drippy ceiling at the base or some other reason for the General’s coat collar to have had wet spots. Probably not his place to know. Most things are not his place to know.

A stupid person might think that he was handed his fully sleeved tac gear because it is _fucking_ cold outside. He is neither stupid, nor a person. He knows they only gave him this uniform because this is a covert op, sort of. It is, at the very least, not the sort of mission that warrants putting the Arm on display.

It’s also not the sort of mission that warrants more weaponry than half a dozen knives and a pair of Makarov pistols, apparently. Not even a single grenade. Not _one_. He’d had to rein in his disappointment at that, make his face as passive as possible, radiate compliance and not thwarted greed when stalking past the ordinance he was _not_ bringing with him.

Granted, he’s got no need for any weapons aside from his own self on this mission, save maybe a utility knife for cutting ropes and stabbing asshole abductors. And sure, every time they give him a grenade, he finds a reason to use it. But what else do they expect? Anything less would be _ungrateful_ is what it would be. He’s plenty grateful.

He can think of fully seven plausible reasons he might have for using a grenade on a rescue op like this. And another dozen reasons that would be a lot harder to invent an excuse for, but damn if he wouldn’t try, had they only given him a grenade. Which they hadn’t.

He stifles a sigh well before it could be detected by the junior field handlers sitting across from him, each armed with a rifle and reminding him just how sparsely armed he gets to be on this op. To be off-base and not bristling with equipment… It’s a naked feeling, even with two full sleeves on his uniform.

It would be ideal if the General was sitting across from him, instead of these trembling novices who don’t even have the confidence to sit unarmed in a helicopter with him. Morons. He wouldn’t crash a helicopter _while he’s in it_. Not before he’s completed his mission, anyway, though he’ll be the first to admit the return trip is anyone’s guess. Not even he can predict his every outburst at the best of times, and he’s even less able to anticipate his responses when there isn’t even a proper handler to, well, handle him.

And that’s clearly what they’re thinking, what _they’re_ trying to predict: Is this the time the Winter Soldier loses his shit and takes out his entire field team, to the last member, including the pilot? He can see their agitation in his peripheral vision. He thinks if he looked at either one of them straight on, they’d both piss themselves right there in the helicopter, and yes: he’s tempted. He’s compliant, but he has his moments. And there was no time in his chair, under the halo. There were no words from the book, read out while walking a steady circle. He’s not working from the most stable of starting points, really. It _does_ make sense that these two would be agitated, even if such agitation is exactly the right way to set him off in the absence of the General or the General’s son.

The General is not agitated in his presence, not nervous around him, not afraid, doesn’t tempt him into threat displays or inspire him to lash out. The General knows his own power, and knows it well, is comfortable wearing his authority. It’s an immense relief to be in front of the General—or even his son, sometimes, on the man’s good days—to be near someone who has zero fear of him, who sees him for what he is and reacts with neither terror nor disgust nor scientific interest, the worst of which by far is scientific interest, which never ends well for him.

The General has never feared him, but the General is also old, and getting older every time the Soldier sees him. He doesn’t handle altitude well anymore. He doesn’t handle the sorts of motions a helicopter makes. Doesn’t handle the cold. The General is slowly falling apart, and there is absolutely nothing the Soldier can do about that, except to watch with carefully hidden dismay and wait for the day when they pull him out of the cryochamber and there is no General at all, only his son and whatever other handlers are feeling confident.

And the General’s son is… not an adequate replacement. Insufficient. A pale shadow of the General, for all that he knows the words and follows the protocols and commands him well. It’s possible he’ll rise to the occasion, possible the General is still grooming him to hold the Winter Soldier project’s reins. But no one directs him as efficiently as the General. His steadily aging, gradually dying General. It’s a painful thought, and he hates thinking it, wishes he could stop thinking it.

In the meantime, he can at least complete this mission objective for the General with perfect precision and competence. The longer he has with the girl’s picture in his mind, the more certain he is that he knows her, and well. Her name has slipped out, which is not entirely uncommon; faces are a lot easier to keep in his head than names—faces and characteristics, the shapes of the people he encounters. Her name has fallen through the cracks in his mind, but it’s left in its place the shape of who she is.

She’s the little mouse. Always getting into trouble and forever needing to be gotten out of it.

He thinks she might be one of the General’s favorites, like the other, the little minnow, who is always trying to swim into his father’s work, even though he’s still so young. Vasily Vladimirovich, he thinks. Vasya, his father calls him. He’s seen that one since the last time the halo came down, when all three of them were at the base—the General, his son, his grandson, three generations—so there’s a name to go with his face and the shape of who he is.

He’ll be a handler some day like his father, if HYDRA doesn’t get its claws in him. And not some uniformed coward with borrowed authority, but a real handler. That’s almost certain. Better than his father, though probably not better than the General himself. It would be… maybe not impossible, but certainly incredibly difficult, to be a better handler than the General. The Soldier wonders what it will be like when the little minnow is reading the words and giving the orders.

 _Different_ , he decides. He will have to forget that little Vasya was ever a minnow. It’s okay. They’ll help him forget. They’ll carefully curate his mind and see to it that he remembers exactly what he is supposed to remember. They always do. Usually with just the halo. Sometimes with… With that other team. And their equipment.

He backs away from the thought, thinks of the little mouse instead.

She will never be a handler. She is too compassionate. She doesn’t like to hurt people. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does. She _hates_ to hurt people. It’s a good quality, but one that won’t be good _for_ her. One that isn’t safe for her to have in her family, so close to HYDRA, so close to people who are cruel. She should learn _how_ to hurt people, so that she _can_ if she needs to, even if she doesn’t like it.

He casts his eyes toward the lights below them, watches from the corner of his vision as the field handlers flinch and shift their rifles at even such a small non-movement on his part. Pathetic. His little mouse wouldn’t have flinched. He _knows_ her, though he doesn’t _remember_ her yet—not entirely; she’s still filtering back into his mind. But he knows she would never shrink back from something so nonthreatening. It would take something much worse to truly frighten her.

These two, though. Sitting there with their rifles, probably white-knuckled under their gloves, and not just because it’s apparently the bare ass-crack of winter and they’re up in a badly insulated helicopter instead of inside by a fire. Cowards. Possibly HYDRA, too. It’s increasingly hard to tell which members of which support teams are actually HYDRA, and which are simply following orders from HYDRA supervisors they didn’t volunteer to work for at job posts they wouldn’t survive leaving.

He’s half afraid that when the General is gone, it will just be layers upon layers of HYDRA, all the way down to the scummiest dregs. The General tries, but HYDRA is a persistent cancer, and he’s being worn down. His son won’t stand a chance, and might not even try, really. There’s a certain logic to joining an enemy you can’t beat. The Soldier wouldn’t put it past the General’s son to go that route after the General dies, but it’s not for him.

For him, HYDRA isn’t just an unsavory growth slithering through the country. HYDRA isn’t _an_ enemy. HYDRA is _the_ enemy.

The first enemy he can remember.

HYDRA is like sand in a lot of ways. Irritating, endlessly self-propagating, getting everywhere it shouldn’t get and impossible to then get rid of. Wearing away at anyone’s resolve like so much grit. Made up of thousands upon thousands of tiny, malignant _dead_ things all piled on top of each other. Get sent out for _one_ op at a beach resort, he knows, and they’ll be finding sand in the Arm for a _year_ , no matter how many times they scrub out the plates and flush the inner workings. HYDRA is like _that_. Only worse. Fuck HYDRA.

And fuck beaches, too, while he’s at it. Nothing good ever happened on a beach.

Several minutes and further reflection on the nature of sandy beaches and fucking HYDRA make for an unintentionally tense landing, and he’s feeling almost apologetic about his accidental contribution to that when one of the General’s other sons finally meets them at the airfield in a little government car.

He’s not sure it’s really meeting them if the man remains in the car he came in and merely passes a duffel out the window to one of the field handlers. It hardly matters. He makes as minimal eye contact with the Soldier as it is possible to make without pointedly ignoring him. This also doesn’t matter.

Because the Soldier remembers this one. The younger politician, with the perpetually terrified transcriptionist wife. He doesn’t think he’s ever so much as glanced in her direction, but she scampers out of any room he enters. Her husband isn’t afraid of him, not really. He’s just wary, which is smart. He knows he’s not a handler, not even a technician. Knows he’s got no authority and no power over him, but also knows that the General would be displeased if he were harmed, and so doesn’t shrink back from him.

This is the little mouse’s father, and with that piece, the puzzle of her coalesces into memory.

 _His_ little mouse. Sent to stay with the General in the summers, out at the dacha outside Perm. Climbing trees when she’s specifically told not to. Making mud puddles to splash in right before the General’s wife has company over. Cutting up the curtains to make dresses for her dolls. Getting crumbs absolutely _everywhere_ , somehow even when she isn’t eating anything. Driving the General’s wife into a frustrated rage every summer without fail.

And he catches hell for that all summer long, but better him than his little mouse. In the hands of Vera Mikhailova, a wooden spoon is a formidable weapon. To say nothing of her letter opener, or a handy torque wrench from the shed. The General’s wife has appreciable upper body strength despite her age, and the little mouse does not make her smile.

The little mouse _does_ make the General smile. She’d make him smile, too, if he was permitted to do that. He was right earlier. She _is_ one of the General’s favorites, and she would be one of his as well, except that he does not have clearance to choose favorites of anything. Between the nervous caution of her father and the blind terror of her mother, the Soldier has no idea how his little mouse came to be born with all that fierce defiance and headstrong spirit.

He’s got plenty of time to ponder the origins of his little mouse’s inner fire on the drive to the drop point, but he doesn’t. Between the one field handler who chose the wrong side of the coin and has to sit in the back with the unopened duffel between them serving as a symbolic barrier, and other field handler up front driving like he’s afraid a pothole will enrage his unchained time-bomb of a passenger, the Soldier is just too distracted by simmering disgust to give his little mouse much thought.

His little mouse and simmering disgust have no business sharing a place in his thoughts.

He could clear his throat and maybe both of these handlers would keel over from heart failure. Maybe he should help them along, should just reach forward between the front seats and do the steering himself, with the Arm. Are they really _so_ junior? Do they have that little experience? They were on the Perm base. He shouldn’t be a completely mundane everyday occurrence to them, but he also shouldn’t be a specter from their deepest subconscious fears.

The General wouldn’t have sent him out into the field with inadequate support—and these kids are absolutely inadequate, even just to handle infil transport—but then… The General never formally assigned him a field team for this op. These were just the two who were up next for field work when they finally got helicopter clearance for the op.

This… Huh. This might not actually be an official mission. He lets the thought sit in his head for a few minutes before unpacking it. He didn’t sit in his chair. The halo never came down. No one read the words out of the book. The briefing was largely verbal with a photograph, an address and a transcribed ransom note.

There _have_ been official missions with as little background. Some with even less. Some with just a name and a deadline. And some where transportation hadn’t been cleared by the time he needed to be transported. But they all followed the protocol. It’s the official protocol, for the entire Winter Soldier project. It’s the protocol for a reason, even if he doesn’t know the reason.

The General broke protocol.

He’s got the authority to do it—he wrote the protocols, and he can choose new ones as he sees fit—but the Soldier can’t quite think of another instance like this one. There is _always_ a session under the halo before a mission, to clear out his mind and let him focus. There are _always_ words read from the book if the halo session is for mission prep and not just good housekeeping, sweeping out cobwebs, as it were.

So.

Unpacked, the thought takes a moment to settle, all the contributing pieces swirling like leaves in a wind and arranging themselves into a realization that is entirely forbidden. _This is a personal op._ This is not a mission to further the General’s military goals or to cripple enemies of the state; it’s a favor. A favor the General. The General wants him to do this… for _him_ , not for Mother Russia.

It isn’t a thing he’s been _ordered_ to do, it’s a thing he’s been _asked_ to do.

For all that there was the call-and-response—the greeting and designation, the presentation of a mission, the ready-to-comply: the opening volley of an official mission with all the adherence to protocols that entails—this is not actually a thing he’s been commanded to do. It’s a thing  that’s been presented as an option, a thing that’s been requested of him. Because the General loves the little mouse and wants her to be safe.

Well. She’s his little mouse, too. If it was an official mission, he would comply. That’s a given, that’s a guarantee, that’s as certain as the sunrise creeping over the city below. But she’s his little mouse, and the General has _requested_ this. He will not merely comply.

He will comply with _enthusiasm_.

 

* * *

 

**—Behind a textile factory in Moscow: Saturday around noon, 21 November 1970—**

It is not an impressive building, the one the little mouse’s kidnappers decided to use as the drop point for the ransom that is not coming their way. More than a little falling down, despite its concrete construction, which is probably why they chose it.

He feels entirely justified in making that assessment, aided by the fact that he has stealthily inspected every aspect of the building’s exterior—its slushy roof, its small parking lot, its sad garden—and has found every element to be lacking.

The roof is tolerable enough as far as vantage points go, and it was simple to climb up to when first scouting the area, but it’s clearly leaking in places, and seems to have been designed to capture rainwater and snowmelt in large, mosquito-breeding pools. Not so much an issue in the winter, but he would find it to be exceedingly unpleasant staking out this rooftop in the summer. Perhaps it is a design feature and not a flaw, when seen from the eyes of someone being stalked by assassins.

No one in that building would ordinarily fall into that category, of course. Factory workers are not well represented on the scorecard of targets he’s been tasked with eliminating over the years. They aren’t absent entirely—he’d be hard pressed to find a category of person he hadn’t been sent for at this point—but they tend to be beneath the General’s notice. If he was aimed at a worker or manager or whatever at a—he checks the signage again—at a men’s suit manufacturer, then it was probably a loaner mission, anyway. Something for one of the Western heads of HYDRA. They were petty like that.

The factory’s parking lot is an appropriate enough size, no wasteful use of space, but one could be excused for assuming a herd of combine harvesters routinely drove in circles all over it, tearing up asphalt and leaving potholes that—if he were of a mind to measure—would swallow most cars whole. Parking on the lot without lodging the car deep in a pothole would require skill—skill he _has_ , but would prefer not to have to test against this patchwork parking lot.

It’s hardly a surprise the blond idiot waiting inside one of the interior offices—it had been hard to tell for sure exactly where he was from the initial surveillance work—for ransom money that will never arrive had parked on the street in front instead of risking it. The junior handlers wouldn’t have fared well, either, so it’s just as well they dropped him off three blocks away to walk the remainder. He’d enjoyed slamming the door when he got out, just to see them jump.

It will probably bite him later, when they are not so junior, have some real authority over him, and remember him far better than he remembers them. That’s life, though. Eventually, everyone graduates upwards through the ranks, gets older and wiser, gains clout and status—that, or gets pulled like ineffectual weeds from the Winter Soldier project’s garden.

He’s pulled a number of such weeds, sometimes under orders from the General, his son, or one of the other handlers, and sometimes accidentally, just because the drugs put him off-balance, or he’d forgotten where exactly he was, or… he doesn’t know all the reasons. It’s hard to anticipate. He just knows he does more weeding than most agents in the program feel comfortable with.

He thinks, while making his last exterior pass before infil—information before action; verify the turf before engaging on it—that the factory’s little garden could use some non-euphemistic weeding. As far as gardens go, this one is painful.

He doesn’t claim to be an expert. Three consecutive summers wrangling radishes, cultivating cabbages, propagating potatoes and whatever else does not an expert make, and neither does absorbing a small library of horticultural garbage facts over the decades from support team chatter about their own vegetable adventures out at their dachas.

But while he makes no such claims on expertise, he will readily admit, as he stalks through crunching dead stems: he passes judgement on this garden. _Harsh_ judgement.

He will grant that it is winter, and that a crop of tomatoes, cucumbers, or dill would fail. But where are the onions and shallots, the garlic, the fall potatoes, the beans and peas… There aren’t even carrots. What are these people thinking? Their employers obviously grant them use of the space, and every inch of arable soil really ought to be used for food crops, what with the shortages in the stores. So why are there a half dozen dead potato vines and five square feet of ailing cyclamens?

For that matter—he doesn’t bother to shut the door behind himself, since leaving it the way he finds it will draw less attention if the man inside is expecting company—why are the cyclamens ailing at all? It’s winter. They thrive in the winter. They thrive in the _countryside_ in the winter with no human caretaker to lend them a hand.

It might be that the seamstresses at this particular factory do not use the garden, and that there are groundskeepers instead. That the garden isn’t meant to be a garden at all, but just a bit of decorative frippery behind the building. But groundskeepers in Moscow should be able to keep cyclamens alive in the winter. Killing cyclamens in the winter should be like killing dandelions in the summer after they’ve all gone to seed, or like uprooting HYDRA after a few decapitations and the yeast-like expansion of heads that follows: fucking hard.

So. The garden is a shame, and public one, no less. That is just a sorry bit of incompetence. It would make him wince in secondhand embarrassment, except that embarrassment is a thing people feel (he’s far more familiar with shame, anyway), and he tries to keep his winces held back for things that are personally worth shrinking away from. Lieutenant Lukin in a bad mood: definitely worth the wince. Pathetic street gardeners in Moscow: not even a little worth it.

He is not surprised to find drafty windows, unevenly hung doors, and warped floorboards all throughout the offices in the upper floors of the building, once he’s made his way past the rank and file sewing stations and convinced the stairs not to squeak as he climbs them. It’s obvious this factory has fallen on harder times than the rest of the Soviet Union.

He could fix those things—even the creaking steps—using the home improvement skills he’s mastered while doing the General’s handiwork out at the dacha in between doing the General’s wetwork out in the world. Unlocking the memory of his little mouse has reminded him of a good many related things, including carpentry, apparently. He could replace the factory’s sheet rock and resurface the concrete flooring if he happens to get the blond mafioso’s blood soaked through it.

He won’t—replace the sheet rock and resurface the concrete, that is. He’s _definitely_ going to splash blood everywhere.

They stole his little mouse.

They will not die clean or quick.


	6. Soldat: He’s going to run out of ribs, after all

**—Textile factory in Moscow: Saturday, noon, 21 November 1970—**

It’s a shame that the foreman’s secretary and whoever else will arrive Monday and find a mess. But he can’t quite muster any empathy for people who let a garden rot like the one behind this factory, all mushy tubers and shriveled leaves.

And if he’s unimpressed by the factory or its workers, he’s downright disappointed in the kidnappers themselves. He only has the one to judge by in any firsthand sense, his hair a lighter blond now that he’s not looking at him through a smudged exterior window, and his body thickset in a way that might look like muscle to anyone less trained in seeing the truth under layers of winter coat and fat.

Since he does have this man to judge the pack of them by, he goes ahead and makes a judgement. _They’re all morons._

Even if he had cause to suspect he was alone in this building he should not be in, it was stupid of him not to close doors behind himself. Beyond the basic common sense practice of leaving things as one finds them, leaving doors open—in this case, the secretary’s door—makes it incredibly simple for someone else to lurk unseen in a hallway and use the mirror smooth surface of a knife to observe the back and forth from desk to window during the last few minutes of waiting for a pile of money to show up.

Won’t _he_ be disappointed when what shows up happens to be an irate Winter Soldier equipped with, no, not money, but plans to extract his spine if that’s what it takes to find the little mouse. It’s been a while since he was tasked with butterflying a target. He’s got sharp enough knives for it, though, if that’s what it comes to. Poor, stupid, doomed mafioso.

Leaving that door open also makes it easy for a leather-wrapped bundle of impending violence to listen in on the conversation when the man checks in with his cohorts.

“Aw, come on. Pick up, bro. We had a schedule.” The man hangs up and beats out a little rhythm on the desk with his palms. So energetic for a man who isn’t going to be in one piece for very much longer. “There’s lots of you and one of her. You can’t be that busy out there.”

The Soldier’s eyes narrow. They had better not be busy at all, for any value of “busy” that resulted in harm to his little mouse. Still, if they’re expecting a signal, he should let them get it. It would be different if he’d been able to get here earlier—early enough to collect an address, dispatch this waste of air and be on his way to collect the little mouse. This close to the failed ransom drop, though, they are clearly expecting some feedback, either confirmation of payment or the knowledge that they need to try again. If they don’t hear anything, they might take it out on her.

The man finally has some success on his third dial. “Bro, hey! How are things?” He opens drawers one by one, rifling through them. Snooping in the secretary’s desk—why bother? All secretaries’ desks are largely identical: A few stamps. Pens. Paper. A tape dispenser. Rubber bands. Letter opener. Boring, boring, boring, except sometimes the letter openers are pretty. The General’s wife keeps a beautiful letter opener at the dacha. She’s only stabbed him with it twice. “How’s the hand, bro?”

The response is muffled and crackly, but his hearing is good enough to pick it up from the receiver if he concentrates on it. “Never mind about my damn hand, bro. You have the money so we can unload this little bitch?”

He scowls. His little mouse is not a bitch.

“Nah, bro.” Now he’s slamming cabinets—this fool can’t even snoop quietly. “They never came. Not even a drive-by, bro.”

What the hell is their obsession with that word? What does “bro” even mean? He runs through a few likely languages for the source of the term, decides it’s a bastardization of “brother,” and judges them even more harshly than the pathetic garden around back.

“You checked for police, right, bro? KGB? Could be a trap. They could be watching you.”

Well, after a manner of speaking, they _are_. He is, in a very technical sense, part of the KGB, one of the spokes under the larger umbrella. KGB contains Department X. Department X contains Winter Soldier project, Red Room, Leviathan, a dozen other squabbling sibling sub-departments. It’s a technicality, but it’s accurate enough. And he is absolutely watching.

“I’m telling you, bro, no one’s even driven by. I’ve been checking, bro, been looking out the window.” He gives the window a glance, as though he could even see the street from the secretary’s chair. “Bro, caution is my middle name. I’m not stupid.”

He questions that.

He has an answer for that question, too: Blond bro is _categorically_ stupid. He could single-handedly define the term. _Stupid, adj. Definition: this guy right here._ Hand bro is probably every bit as much an idiot, just meaner and more (justifiably) paranoid. They are apparently an arm of one of the criminal organizations in Moscow, according to their ransom note, but any mafia with these yokels as an arm would stand to benefit from amputation.

“Whatever, bro. You gotta send a second note. Tell the government man we’ll add some fingers to the third note. Bitch has ten of them, and it’ll serve her right to lose a few.”

He will be able to recognize Hand bro’s voice when he finally locates his little mouse. Hand bro has a world of suffering coming his way.

“That’s harsh, bro.” The drawers open again, one by one, same order as before, as Blond bro looks for pen and paper. Even the Soldier hasn’t forgotten which one he needs—far right, top drawer—and he’s going mostly on sound and a sliver of reflection. “Leave her hands alone. I’m not writing about _fingers_. Bro, come on. She’s, like, _three_. Chill out. We’ll just demand more money than before.”

“ _Three_ fingers, then. Put it in the note, bro. _And_ we want more money. The exchange rates on rubles are insane. We’ll never get to America at this rate.” Hand bro hangs up.

They had better not have harmed his little mouse. She had better have all her limbs and digits intact—and every other part of her tiny, precious self—when he finds her. Otherwise, well. He doesn’t enjoy being cruel, but he has an undeniable talent for it. They taught him that—modeled it for him, _on_ him more often than not—and he’s learned those lessons very well. And each and every one of these so-called bros has a spine that could stand removal.

Blond bro doesn’t take much time to write out his note, once he finds the pens and paper. Only a few minutes. If he knew what was waiting just to the side of the open door for him to finish that note, he’d probably take a lot longer to write it. Not everyone faces unavoidable pain and suffering with unflinching resignation like the Soldier does.

Blond bro is laughably easy to get the drop on coming through the door, and even easier to disarm. He slams the man’s face into the door jamb with his metal hand around his neck and slips his flesh hand under the man’s coat to slip the gun out from where it’s been tucked in the back of his belt. It’s a stupid place to keep a gun—and a good way for Blond bro to shoot himself in the ass—but the Soldier is unsurprised. _Everything else_ about Blond bro is stupid. Why not this, too?

He tosses the gun aside—his are better, and he won’t be shooting Blond bro, in any case—and hauls the stunned moron back into the secretary’s office. It’s as good a place as any to get started on extracting information, and possibly vertebrae, from him. He nudges the door closed behind them, because he’ll accept the added buffer the door provides against some curious bystander off the street unwisely investigating screams in a factory that should be empty.

Blond bro is neatly tethered to the secretary’s chair by means of convenient suit ties and backed up against the desk return by the time he stirs enough to mumble “Bro, wha?” and look up.

“Where is she?” The Soldier is exceedingly pleased that his voice comes out as a calm demand and not as the enraged roar he was half expecting. That’s good. That’s evidence his self-control is still intact, hasn’t been frayed too badly by several hours of delays between transportation arrangements at the Perm base and having to wait for the General’s son at the airfield because the man had gone to the wrong one at first.

Blond bro gapes up at him, still apparently trying to process the fact of his existence. It would be a comical expression in some other situation, but the Soldier prefers not to make pleasant comparisons about the people he kills, so it’s just a confused frown, a stupid frown, the frown dying men make before they realize what they’re in for.

“The little girl you helped kidnap,” he clarifies, gesturing with one of his shinier knives. “Where is she?”

“Bro, you are _fast_ , bro. Where’d you even come from?” He shakes his head, sending the blood leaking from his nose in a slightly new path down his face, and then snorts some of it back up into his sinuses, which is a bad move—the Soldier knows full well how awful it feels to have sinuses clogged with congealed blood—but not a move he’ll live long enough to regret. “Wow,” he continues, more nasally than before. “Fucking _ouch_ , bro. We could use a bro like you when we move to America.”

What. An. Idiot.

“And you’re late, bro. It costs more now. I already called my—”

The Soldier reaches forward and cuts him off by silently pressing his metal thumb steadily against the man’s right fifth rib, maintaining eye contact the entire time. The man’s eyes widen as the pressure increases, until the rib snaps inward with a liquid crunch (from the bone) and a surprised shriek (from the bro). He stands back again. “Where is she?” Still calm. _Good job, Soldier._

The man tries to hunch forward to protect his chest, but ties are remarkably sturdy when knotted just right. “Bro, what the hell, bro!?” Beyond the pain, he sounds indignant, and the Soldier wonders what right this moron has to indignation. “You should at least pretend you have the money, try to talk me up, something. I mean—” He sucks up more blood with a thick snorfle. “—I wouldn’t have fell for it, bro, ‘cause my mama didn’t raise an idiot, but—”

His mother absolutely raised an idiot. Blond bro’s survival odds are dropping steadily, and they were never good to begin with, despite his efforts to save the little mouse’s fingers. The Soldier reaches out and snaps another rib, waits for the man’s squeal to subside into into a choked sob and then silence. “You have twenty-four ribs.” Voice still calm. _Victory_. “I’m going to break one of them every minute until you tell me where she is.”

He grabs the man’s chin in his metal hand and tilts his head up, forces eye contact again, makes him wait a moment. “Then I’m flipping you over and starting on your spine. Going to carve it out, one piece at a time. Where is she?”

He really thinks that ought to do the trick as far as motivators go—stronger men have crumbled at threats like that—but this man is thick as bricks, so there’s no guarantee. He might end up running out of ribs before he gets an actual answer, and not from any steely resolve or inner strength Blond bro has for holding up under torture. No, if this man doesn’t talk, it’ll be because he’s too stupid to find the words.

“Holy _shit_ , bro. Who says things like that? Holy _fucking_ — Are you _insane?!_ ”

It’s possible. He doesn’t tend to ponder that kind of question, himself. There are no good answers. So he simply mashes another pair of ribs into splinters, going ahead and doing them in tandem. There are still plenty to spare. Also fingers, and fingernails, and maybe Blond bro would like him to help unclog his sinuses with something sharp and pointy. Mix it up a little until he gets what he needs.

“Bro, brooo! Give a bro a minute to breathe, huh?” He moans and shakes his head, rocking against his bonds with a little cry. “I’ll talk. I’ll… Bro, who the fuck _are_ you, bro? Are you KGB?”

That is not an answer. It’s not an address, either. All he really needs is an address at this point, though he’d like more information if he can get it fast. He’s going to run out of ribs, after all.

 

* * *

 

Six more ribs, three torn fingernails, a broken thumb and a lot of muffled screaming later, he is in possession of something akin to an address, the best Blond bro could choke out between whimpers. It’s some little cluster of rural dachas outside of Pereslavl-Zalessky. He knows where that is. The General has made sure he’s exceptionally well-versed in geography, both on a global scale and more locally.

He wipes his bloody fingers off on Blond bro’s open coat, and jots it down, just in case. Top drawer. Far right. _Ooh, nice stationery_ , he thinks, running a metal finger along its surface to better appreciate the texture. And it _is_ nice, especially considering the rest of the factory is halfway to falling over in a stiff wind. Probably obtained through theft or bribery, as most things of decent quality are in the country. Supplies are so limited.

Of course, there will be a healthy handful of little cottages to search through out that way. He hasn’t got time for that. Blond bro will have to narrow it down a bit. Most of the stupid has been beaten out of him, so he should have the mental faculty for it, with a little prompting. The Soldier is pleased to provide that.

After another half dozen snapped ribs, a broken wrist, a sliced open nostril, and a lapful of vomited blood that the Soldier manages to avoid by having excellent instincts about these things built in large part from firsthand personal experience of the same, he has a license plate to look for, an estimation of somewhere between three and five men at that dacha, depending on who gets called in from their bratva to help out, and a description of the dacha in question: light blue exterior, red-painted fence, latticework over the upper level windows, metal rooster wind vane on the roof.

And dried up vines on poles from last summer’s half-harvested long beans.

It seems no one he learns about today is any good at gardening. That’s disappointing.

“Eight ribs to go, then your spine,” he murmurs in what is left of Blond bro’s ear. “Anything else I should know about her situation?”

“Brooooooo,” the man moans, voice thick with blood and pain. He’d probably scream if he had more lung capacity; as it is, there’s more wheeze left in him than anything else. The Soldier feels the warmth of a job well done. The General will probably like this report, provided he gets their little mouse back without injury.

He breaks another rib for the hell of it. “Seven, now. Tell you what. You answer this last question, and then we get you some medical attention. Sound good?”

There isn’t going to be medical attention. But there could be an end to everything, and the Soldier knows how very appealing oblivion can be. Still, Blond bro seems more like the type who wants to live and less like the type who looks forward to dying. And hope is an even better motivator than fear and pain for those types, no matter what the HYDRA fuckers have to say about it.

“M’blood type’s AB, bro.” It’s a croak, but clear enough for someone with experience at interpreting such sounds. “AB. For the doctors.”

“Answer the question, first. Then we’ll see.” He runs the tip of his knife along one of the ridges in his left hand, cleaning out a bit of blood that’s starting to mat. He’ll need to wash up before leaving for Pereslavl-Zalessky.

“Wha’sa question, bro?” Blond bro shakes in the secretary’s chair and tries to lift his head on his own, fails, and ends up muttering into his blood-drenched shirt. “You never… Bro, what… Wha’sa…”

He knows how terrible it is to be asked a question that isn’t a question, to forget what the last question had been, to know that someone who is intent on hurting him is wanting an answer but not pointing him in the right direction toward one. And Blond bro _did_ object to cutting off his little mouse’s fingers. And he’s been cooperative enough, once all the stupid leaked out. He’s earned a little clarification.

“Pretend you’re her father. You know where she is and who she’s with. What are you afraid of?” Clearly, there’s something, given the man’s reaction to that. Something worse than a lost finger. That’s not ideal. The Soldier sits up straighter, pays closer attention.

“Bro, don’ kill me, bro.” The man manages to get his neck working again now, if only so that he can look up at the Soldier with eyes that are wide and terrified. “S’not my fault, bro. I told ‘em— I said—” He cuts himself off, stares, shivers, doesn’t resume babbling.

“What isn’t your fault?” He slaps Blond bro, hard enough to hurt, light enough that his head stays on his neck. He doesn’t have time for Blond bro to pass out.

“I talked,” he whines. “I fuckin’ _talked_ , bro. Don’ cut out my spine, broooo…”

He grits his teeth to keep himself from doing something that might make Blond bro incapable of speaking. “ _Keep_ fucking talking, and maybe I _won’t_.” Oh, and the calm voice is gone, eaten up by a low growl. _Do better, Soldier._

“It’s Borya, bro.” Blond bro squeezes his eyes shut. He’s already streaked tears through the blood on his face, but he adds a few new wet trails on top of the old. “He’s a bad bro. Has ideas ‘bout little girls, bro.” He shakes his head, weakly, but with what vigor he has left. “ _Bad_ ideas. But th’others are _good_ bros. They won’ leave her alone with him. Bro, _please_. My spine…”

And that gets the Arm going, all cascading calibration loops and chittering whirs fit for a confrontation with the excav— He shakes his head. No time for shit like that. Back away. The possibilities Blond bro has alluded to white out some of his thought processes in a wash of incandescent rage and send others into incoherent overdrive.

 _Fuck_.

Pereslavl-Zalessky is about two hours away, maybe another half hour to find some fucking metal chicken on a rooftop. It’d take longer to get back to the incompetent handlers and have them arrange another helicopter, even if that sort of thing had any kind of chance of being circumspect enough for an unofficial mission.

He’ll just drive himself, ignore traffic regulations, and report in later, when he has the little mouse. Blond bro has a car out front. Keys in left front coat pocket. He won’t even have to hot wire the fucking thing.

He _will_ have to send Blond bro off to wherever obtuse garbage people go when they die, though. It’s conceivable he could survive to be a witness without a little push over the edge. And he cooperated well enough to earn a quick sendoff. Well. Quick compared to what he’s going to do to Hand bro and this disgusting Borya asshole.

He hauls the chair around with a scrape of wooden legs on shitty thin carpeting, standing behind Blond bro to avoid the impending arterial spray. “Thanks for the tip, ‘bro,’” he mutters into the man’s intact ear as he yanks his head back and slits his throat as cleanly as a slit throat is going to be. He wipes his knife off on one of the few dry patches the man’s coat has left along the back, and leaves Blond bro burbling and spluttering wetly, spending his last couple of minutes contributing to the spreading puddle destroying the secretary’s carpet.

It’s a predictable mess he’s left getting his information, with blood splashed all across the desk, walls, floor—even a bit on the ceiling—and it’s also the reason he left the duffel outside. That duffel has a set of the little mouse’s clothing inside it. He won’t get blood on that. The little mouse is precious. Precious things should be protected from monsters and the blood they trail in their wake. This particular precious thing, his precious little mouse…

He takes a deep, slow breath, calmer than he feels. But fake it. Pretend. Pretend to be calm until he is calm.

There is nothing he can do about what has already happened. He cannot stop her from being taken off the street. He cannot arrange for speedier transportation in Perm or give her father clear directions to the correct airfield. He cannot rearrange time itself to keep her safe, though he would—he would burn reality to soot and ash if it would protect her.

Two hours is a long time to dwell on the prospect of his little mouse afraid and suffering. And that kind of thinking isn’t productive. Could be considered counterproductive. Anyway, he already has plenty of personal miserable experiences to reflect on, if he were interested in wallowing in such things. There’s no need for or benefit to speculating on his little mouse’s possible encounter with some of the same.

Far better to devote his creativity to planning the lingering deaths of however many bros are waiting for him to visit their fucking chicken-roofed dacha in Pereslavl-Zalessky. It won’t be clean. It won’t be quick. They should be deeply, passionately terrified when they die. They should see death coming for them a long way out. They should have time to get thoroughly acquainted with the precursors of that death, all the pain and fear and suffering that go into a well-crafted, slow demise.

Two hours is a damn long time to invent new forms of physical and psychological torment to visit upon the depraved, shit-licking bastards who stole his little mouse, particularly when one only has a pair of guns, several knives, and an incredibly agitated Arm to work with.

He spends his two hours very, very productively.


	7. Soldat: His little mouse comes first

**—Dacha outside of Pereslavl-Zalessky: Saturday evening, 21 November, 1970—**

There are no fewer than _fifteen_ dachas topped with fucking metal chickens in this rural neighborhood, and if he had more bandwidth to devote to disdain at the moment, he would take the time to thoughtfully ponder, and then harshly judge the shit out of, anyone who would _choose_ to put a fucking chicken on their roof, metal or otherwise. There is nothing of intrinsic value about chickens that warrants rooftop accessorizing with them. They are not guardian spirits in any lore he’s heard. Pretty much the opposite.

Fucking chickens.

Too many fucking metal chickens in this fucking neighborhood and not enough latticework. And blue is clearly their favorite color in these parts. It’s goddamn everywhere. If he could go back and beat a little more of the stupid out of Blond bro in preemptive retaliation for this idiotic set of descriptors… 

Thankfully, he finally spots one ugly chicken dacha that is blue—a particularly terrible shade of powder blue, _so_ hideous—that _does_ have the latticework around the upper level. Its fence is _not_ red, though. It’s more of a brownish maroon than anything else—a decent match for the dried blood in the seams of his metal fingers, which seems fitting enough—but he supposes he can’t fault Blond bro for the inaccuracy, now that he’s finally gotten somewhere with his instructions. Color theory would have been wasted on that one.

And he _was_ right about the goddamn chicken, anyway. Give the dearly-departed idiot _some_ credit.

He parks the car out of sight, leaves the duffel in the trunk, and makes something midway between a laudably thorough and a lamentably perfunctory inspection of the dacha to get an overview of the situation. Idiots leapt before they looked. He is not an idiot. Know the situation, _then_ engage. And then report in, ideally, which he skipped, and which has been hounding him at the back of his head for at least one of the hours of his drive up. But when intel suggests necessary action and not a pause to debrief, one might as well go with it. It’s the General. He understands.

Outhouse is empty, shed is empty, no neighbors currently at home—logical enough, this time of day in the middle of the fucking winter; they’ll be at their actual houses, not their chicken-topped dachas. There’s one nicotine-yellow car out front with the correct license plate and a coating of snow, and yes, the desiccated remains of unharvested long beans out back. Most importantly: no sounds of active distress from inside.

That doesn’t mean there _is_ no distress, active or otherwise, but he holds onto the silence as a comfort anyway. It doesn’t do anything at all to dampen the internal fire of _I-will-end-them_ , but it does help nudge his rage into setting the bellows down and not continuing to fan those flames. He’ll take it. Anger is an impediment to proper focus.

The front door is locked, which means absolutely nothing to him and doesn’t slow him down in the slightest. It does mean that the occupant of the dacha’s front room is not expecting any visitors, though, and therefore there is an outraged protest, a waved gun, and a shot sloppily fired over his shoulder and into the side of the yellow car before the front door slams shut. It also means there’s a minor tussle by the fireplace before he has a barbed, wrought iron poker in his hand and a very pleasing idea about where to put it.

He’s impaled people with a variety of objects over the years, but never a fireplace poker that he can recall. He makes a mental note of it, adding it to the list of tools he’s made use of during ops, and nails this miserable mustachioed garbage person to the wall by the front door. His aim is impeccable, and not just with projectiles. The poker goes in clean, satisfying, hitting a kidney and ripping through intestines before embedding itself firmly in the wall, but missing anything that’ll bleed too fast. 

Make it hurt. Make it last. Move on. Check. Check. Check.

He doesn’t have time to lovingly craft each moment of Mustache bro’s torment while there are an unknown number of remaining bros in the dacha, any one of whom could hurt his little mouse while he’s occupied with giving the rest of them a very bad day. Unacceptable. So Mustache bro will just have to literally hang around until he has time to circle back.

He will make them suffer, absolutely. He’s put in considerable thought as to how he will do that (so much thought), what methods he will use (all of them), what tools (everything he picks up), whether he will say anything or be silent (silent, definitely silent; that always seems to terrify people, not being able to tell what he’s thinking, what he might want from them—as if he is capable of wanting anything). Oh, he’s given it thought. He’s drafted an opus to their misery, a veritable symphonic _masterpiece_ of suffering to perform for them, _on_ them.

But his little mouse comes first, and these assholes will have to come last. Time constraints being what they are, that means it’s business as usual for the moment—efficiently moving from one cleared area to the next, verifying that guns are dropped, knives are out of reach, and target mobility is hampered or outright destroyed.

He will revisit them later. There will be time for that. Time to dole out every shuddering glissando of pain and fear they deserve to experience. Time to make sure they are thoroughly acquainted with the extremes a human body can be dragged to that hover on the edge of unconsciousness, that dance just short of oblivion, that dilate one’s perception of time into eons of suffering.

He knows these extremes. He’s lived adjacent to them for decades, has been a frequent unwilling guest in their house, has memorized their patterns even when everything else seems to slip his mind with ease. He will make the necessary introductions here—bro, this is agony; agony, bro—and he will make them with savage precision and ferocious attention to detail. But not right now. The time for that is later. He will have to wait, and so will they.

His little mouse comes first.

Before he can see to her needs, though, the dacha must be cleared. Next up is obviously Hand bro, judging from the partly wound bandaging looping loosely about his right hand as he emerges from the second room on this lower level, raising a knife in his left hand and squawking in outrage at the intrusion as though he thinks he’s a threat. Tch. A goose would be more threatening. Geese are sadistic assholes, almost as aggressive as nesting swans. Hand bro does a very poor goose impression. But then, his patron saint is apparently a chicken. What else should be expected?

Hand bro gets half a muttered threat out—and yes, the voiced words confirm this to be Hand bro—before his posturing is reduced to panic as the Soldier closes the distance and blocks the knife with a casual backhand. The posturing is further reduced to a scream when the Soldier clenches his metal hand over Hand bro’s injury and squeezes until the bones crack and the hand warps out of shape, becomes more chunky pulp than recognizable extremity. That’s going to be a bitch to clean out of the plates.

He backs Hand bro into the room by his grip on the wreckage of bone and tissue that is now the man’s hand, and plucks the knife from his left hand’s intact-for-now-but-not-for-long fingers before it can drop. He deftly flips the blade around and jabs Hand bro in the throat with the butt of the handle, hard enough to crush trachea and larynx. A kick to the gut sends the man sailing over the trio of cots and crashing against the far wall, and that’ll do the trick for a while.

The pain will keep him down, the fear of suffocation will keep him still, and a crushed windpipe—while excruciating—is almost never going to kill someone on its own, even when paired with three, maybe four, broken ribs. He’ll check later, see what the rib count actually was, probably break a few more, on principle and because he’s angry.

A quick visual sweep of the room verifies that this area now counts as cleared. It also reveals a telephone on a side table—excellent; he’ll use that to make his report once the little mouse is safe and tucked out of earshot. He’s late with his report, even if no report has been required. There’s a bit of old bandaging by the telephone that catches his eye and holds it. The messy bundle of gauze is imprinted with a series of red semicircles where the layers overlapped as they pressed against what can only be a bite wound, and a deep one.

His little mouse. The size is right for her mouth.

The scents of ripe apples and tomato leaves cloud up his mind, and the thin cedar slabs hammered together into a crate the younger diplomat could manage on a train, the faint drift of lavender coming off his little mouse’s dress from the detergent her perpetually terrified mother used in the laundry. The pressure of her little teeth tentatively nibbling at him, her worry that she would hurt him—sweet little child afraid _she_ would cause _him_ pain… He sucks in a shuddering breath, swallows the memories back where they won’t impede his mission, grits his teeth, and moves on.

He will kill them _all_ for making her bite them. He will _dismember_ them, bone by bone, take them apart into their component pieces, and _burn_ what is left over.

But not yet. His little mouse comes first.

He can’t even say it’s a novel concept, ensuring that each mark remains alive and in decent enough condition to be of use later. He’s been sent in to clear an area and leave survivors able to be be questioned, and he’s been a tool used during those interrogation sessions, too. Often he’s just a silent threat in a corner, but occasionally, when ordered to participate, his is the actual hand wielding the bamboo skewers, the ball peen hammer, the sandpaper, the eyedropper full of acid…

Perhaps the only new elements here are the knowledge that his little mouse is locked up under those stairs behind a flimsy wooden chair, and the temptation to abandon his current dacha-clearing goal to skip straight to removing that chair and reassuring himself that she is alive and whole under the stairs, to gather her up and inspect each tiny finger.

But they do have guns, these blundering, chicken-worshiping, garbage mafiosos, and he will do nothing that could bring his little mouse further harm, or that could put her in line to catch a bullet or a blade, or even a fist if someone decides pulling her aside and hurting her will slow him down.

Noise above gives him ample warning, even if he hadn’t already been expecting someone upstairs to try shooting him—if faced with something akin to himself, he’d opt to shoot first, too, keep it at a distance. The Arm moves almost of its own accord, informed by his peripheral vision and a bit of speedy triangulation, and there’s the sharp double-stab of twin bullet impacts against the metal of his left bicep and wrist, the tear of leather sleeve.

As always, the Arm feeds him information on contact—calculation of pressure, temperature, the double-tap of _pain-pain_ , friction, vectors, compositional structure, angles for ricochet—he discards it all as superfluous, unnecessary for solving the problem of at least one shooter in the attic space. The only important information there is the fact that neither bullet has lodged itself anywhere near his little mouse after bouncing off the metal.

He solves the problem of Attic bro by joining him upstairs and clapping him across the face with his metal fist before turning that hand to the task of destroying his gun. It’s a response Attic bro clearly has no experience with, but why would he? Most people react to being shot at by seeking cover, not by charging toward their shooter and turning his gun into so much twisted metal.

His eyes pick out a few potential hidey holes that will need a search before he’s willing to put his back to them and risk taking a bullet somewhere that could impede his efforts to comfort the little mouse—small children, in his experience, do not handle the presence of bleeding adults very well, especially when those adults can be seen as family of a sort; and his little mouse can be excused for making that kind of misinterpretation of his role. Attic bro will have to go quick.

He can do quick. He’s still got Hand bro’s knife, so he casually hooks it under Attic bro’s belt and slices upward through coat, belt and abdominal muscle before sending him tumbling down the stairs with a spinning kick. He’ll live or he won’t, depending on the landing. The Soldier can’t bring himself to care just now. He’s got an upper level to clear and he’s getting impatient to see to his little mouse and her possible injuries.

And it turns out he needn’t have worried about additional men lurking in the attic. A quick toss of the room—pulling things aside and breaking open what wouldn’t move—reveals a healthy but outdated arsenal (mostly guns and knives, no grenades, a ratty Russian-to-English dictionary) and some bagged drugs (nothing surprising there), but nothing of interest to him or of danger to his little mouse.

The Soldier spares Attic bro a glance as he steps over his prone form—that one’s not going to make it, after all, not the way his neck broke, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know which one of these three is Borya, but that doesn’t matter, either. None of them pose a threat to his little mouse any longer, and that is far more important than meting out judgement.

Whatever further misery he would visit upon these men, protecting his little mouse must, and does, come first.

He is gentle with the chair, slowly moving it aside, trying to emphasize the difference between earlier and now, the rough-fast-loud versus the soft-gradual-quiet. He doesn’t know if it does any good, but that’s another thing that can’t be undone. It helped or it didn’t.

She is huddled in a corner, curled as tightly as she can get, eyes squeezed shut against fear and the light, and he takes the angry snarl that tries to come out and stuffs it down where it belongs, inside, unseen, unheard. It could only be misinterpreted, and he will not run that risk.

His little mouse looks cold, exhausted, dirty, injured. _Terrified._ They’ve obviously kept her in this tiny storage space the whole time they’ve had her, not even letting her out to visit the outhouse. That might be better than the alternative, considering how Borya might have engineered an opportunity if they had decided to keep a watch on her out there. It still makes him see red.

If he could go back and take more time hurting those men, could disarm them more painfully, could hit them two or three more times apiece, he…

…wouldn’t. It comes as a bit of a surprise to him, makes him blink a few times, even. But there it is, in all its bald-faced honesty.

_He wouldn’t._

There’s anger, still. Rage. He can feel it boiling away in his gut, a furious froth climbing the sides of a pot and threatening to explode over the top, but it has no place here. And even though it tries, even though it bubbles and pops and demands to be served up to the assholes who hurt her, it can’t get a stable enough foothold inside with his little mouse right in front of him, keeps sliding back down.

She doesn’t need his anger. She needs _him_. And her needs come first.

They locked her in the _dark_ , didn’t give her the courtesy one gave a _dog_ … _hit_ her… Fully one third of her face is mottled with a colorful bruise, her eye swollen and the delicate skin over her cheekbone split open, and that pisses him off even more than the blood in her hair, but—

But she comes first. Her needs, not his.

It’s not just a mantra; it’s a fact. And when she finally opens her eyes, the one wide and the other in a darkened slit, and looks up at him, blinking her left eye owlishly in what must be bright light after the closet—and doesn’t he know all about that sort of thing—the fact of her needs’ priority over his stabs through the swell of his rage, doesn’t so much put a heavy lid on the seething anger and save it for later as dumps the whole damn pot out into the street untasted. Kicks dirt over the coals. Tosses the crockery in the bin. Slams the lid on the bin. Stalks away.

She blinks up at him, hesitates—oh, and she _hesitates_ , and she has never been less than confident and eager in his presence that he can remember. And he _does_ remember her, remembers _all_ of her, not just the shape of her. Fearless and fierce and headstrong and reckless and going to break her neck falling off a roof if he doesn’t keep both eyes on her… and never timid. She is not—was not, has never been—that kind of mouse.

“I bit down real hard,” she rasps out, looking unsure of herself, and her uncertainty is a knife between his ribs, sharp and hot and trailing fire in its wake.

It digs at him, twists about, tries to rile him back up, but he can’t muster any anger for the men who taught her how to be afraid. His little mouse doesn’t need that. There is no room for that. There’s only room for comfort and restoration. They taught her how to be afraid, and he will kill them for that later, but that isn’t important right now. They taught her fear, but it is not who she is. They taught her that, and so _he_ will teach her—

“And I meant it.”

There she is. 

 _That_ is his little mouse, flickering to the surface through her fear, and he can’t breathe for a second from the relief of it.

He’s not permitted to smile. It’s not been explicitly denied to him, but he’s certainly only ever been encouraged to maintain a neutral expression unless working on an infil op. But he does _have_ a smile that’s just for her, and he feels it slide into place with all the ease his anger couldn’t manage in the little mouse’s presence. “I saw his hand,” he says softly, fingers itching to smooth her hair, to erase the bruise, to comfort her. “I could tell.”

He would reach for her, has only held himself back this long because he isn’t certain the extent of her injuries while she’s curled so tightly, doesn’t want to jostle anything that might be broken. Doesn’t want her hesitation to shift into fear _of him_. Doesn’t know if he’s capable of withstanding _her_ fear, if it were ever directed at him. Thinks her fear might hurt him worse than a lot of things, as illogical as that is. Is just a little terrified of finding out.

More than a little.

So he _would_ reach for her, but he settles for a nod, for letting her make the first approach. “You did good, _myshka_ ,” he says. Because she did. He didn’t see that hand directly, but he saw what the bandages looked like. She did exceptionally well. She shouldn’t have had to, but he can’t undo the past.

And then she’s launching herself at him, wobbly like a new lamb still wet from its mother, her sob hiccuping into a lost, keening wail in his ear as he wraps his arms around her and holds her close.

“Shh, shh,” he murmurs into her hair, smoothing her golden strands with his bloodstained fingers. She is so tiny in his arms, so precious, so fragile. And inside that, inside her tiny little body, she is so much more, has so much spirit, so much life. He would kill for her, and he has, and he will again, but that is not what she needs from him right now. “Shh, _moy myshka_.”

He is here now. She is his to protect, his to look after, his to calm and to soothe and to reassure. His to praise, his to build up, his to heap encouragement upon so that she can grow up fierce and strong and determined, so that her outsides match her insides. “You did real good,” he says, willing her to take the words and store them deep inside where no one can rip them from her, where she can use them as a shield and a foundation to weather future storms.

“The bravest little mouse,” he says, silently begging her to believe it. She _has_ to believe it. _She has to._ “The fiercest.”

 _Please_ believe it.


	8. Soldat: She means so well

**—Dacha outside of Pereslavl-Zalessky: Saturday evening, 21 November, 1970—**

He gives Mustache bro another vindictive little shove as he reenters the dacha, the little mouse’s duffel held in his right hand, marginally less bloody than the left and certainly much cleaner after he scraped up some snow to tidy up with. It doesn’t matter whether that’s Borya by the door; any and all of these garbage assholes are equally disgusting wretches for welcoming someone like that in their midst, as far as he’s concerned.

The snow will make driving back to Moscow more of a challenge, but not one he’s too worried about. He’s driven shittier vehicles through worse weather, though never with cargo as precious as his little mouse. She will be safe. He’ll wait until the snow stops, if that doesn’t leave them here too long. Only three mafiosos at the dacha means at least two more unaccounted for who might check in, likely via telephone. There was no indication at all that three gunshots and a bit of screaming had been detected, so they are clearly not already in the area.

Driving aside, the snow has at least been a good mechanism for scrubbing his hands clean—clean _ish_ , clean _er_ , better than nothing—without his little mouse watching him do it. He’s already failed utterly in that she saw a pair of messy soon-to-be corpses, and he’d rather she not also have the opportunity to fix him in her mind as a blood-spackled nightmare creature. If he’s going to appear in her nightmares, he would far rather show up as her guardian, mercilessly slaughtering anything that approaches her with violent intentions.

Having cleared out the worst of the grime from the seams in his metal hand also means there’s that much less blood and bone fragment available to get caught in her hair later, or to smudge her clean clothing. There’s little point to asking her to bathe herself while he grants her some privacy—people like that, like having private moments to themselves, where no one is watching them—if he’s then going to get blood on her all over again.

Unacceptable. He will not pollute her with the remnants of his actions. She is made for more than that, is precious, should be kept safe from the filth he tracks in his wake.

His little mouse is standing in front of the fire with a towel bunched half forgotten in her hands like she is holding it solely so she has something to cling to for comfort—which might be the case. Even he still has the reflex to clutch at things when distraught, though he is good at keeping it in check. She stands close enough to the fire that she doesn’t shake despite her nakedness and the chill in the air, and also close enough he has a flash of concern that the towel might catch.

But her inattention gives him the opportunity to inspect her without risking that she will _feel_ inspected, or feel judged in any way, or worry that he could possibly find her lacking. Beyond what his earlier scrutiny revealed, her knee is bruised, and the outside of her thigh, marks consistent with a fall, probably when they struck her face, possibly during an earlier attempt at escape. His little mouse would certainly have tried to escape, probably before resorting to using her teeth.

Smaller bruises stipple her arms and legs, more visible now that her skin is clean, likely the result of being knocked about on the drive up—he can’t imagine they’d have made it out of the city with a little girl bound in the backseat, no matter how well they bribed the police, so they’d have put her in the trunk.

He’ll kill them for that, but later.

Right now, since he doesn’t see anything that needs bandaging and she hasn’t missed anything crucial in her fireside ablutions, it’s more important to help her on with her clean dress, get her bundled up and warm again, get her feeling more like the worthwhile and cherished person she is. And to get her hair clean so there’s time for it to dry in the fire’s heat before she has to sleep.

He sets her duffel on the far end of the sofa and gathers up the spent wash water and towels. He was planning to let her keep the one gripped in her hands, for emotional support if she’s not going to use it for modesty, but she hands it to him like she was just waiting for guidance on where to put it, and so he takes it as well, and leaves her extending her fingers—all ten of them, intact and perfect—out toward the flames, keeping warm and entertained by the glow.

That will do. Her lack of concern about being without clothes or a privacy shield confirms for him that none of these garbage men had touched her lustfully, had taught her that particular brand of fear. If they had, he isn’t sure it would be possible to repay them for the lesson—they’d die long before he was ready for them to, no matter how carefully he guided them through the halls of suffering.

He pumps new water for her hair, for a pot of tea, for a pitcher for her to drink from. She’ll be thirsty again. A scan of the cupboards in the kitchen reveals the tea canister and a trio of familiar yellow-wrapped shapes. Excellent. The water can boil for her tea while he gets her dress over her shoulder, and he knows a _kara kum_ when he sees one.

The General’s son—the handler, not the military researcher or either of the two diplomats—has a thing for chocolate. More of a thing than the General, or the General’s wife, or any of the other people he’s had opportunity to interact with in a non-violent fashion. The General’s son takes the field team on detours on the way back from particularly successful ops to purchase chocolate in celebration. It’s not protocol, but it’s not strictly against protocol, either.

Every great once in a while, the General’s son will hand him a piece of chocolate and tell him to eat it. That _is_ strictly against protocol, but he complies. The General’s son means well. Depending on how he’s been fed beforehand, the chocolate can be a treat or a trap.

When it’s been an IV in the flesh arm, an NG tube down his throat, nutritional slurry or tablets by mouth, it’s a trap. Every time, though he sometimes manages to be privately miserable without audibly choking on the mouthful or letting the chocolate come back up. When it’s been solid, actual food chewed and swallowed as people do—solely during and in preparation for long-term covert infil missions—it’s a treat… sometimes.

On the whole, the chocolates are far more often a trap than anything akin to a treat. But the General’s son _does_ mean well. And the Soldier has learned from him all about nougat centers, nut-chocolate-fruit combinations, caramel, wafers, and specific brand names. He has a whole lineup of garbage facts around chocolate gleaned from observation of the General’s son, whose unwitting educational program has enabled him to compile a comprehensive list of every available sweet and its ranking on the Vladimir Ivanovich deliciousness scale.

For example, yellow wrappers with camels on them, smelling of chocolate and wafer through the packaging—those are highly prized _kara kum_ bars the General’s son would be pleased to devour in a military van while radioing base (reporting in, the way _he_ should but hasn’t yet). They are very high up on the Vladimir Ivanovich deliciousness scale, with added points for sentimental value. An excellent find, indeed.

He sets the chocolates aside for later, and puts the water on to boil, then returns to the sofa and the fire, angles the sofa so that it’s both closer to the flames and their glowing warmth and also facing directly away from the man currently nailed to the wall. Better that his little mouse not see him in her peripheral vision, even though her swollen eye makes an accidental glance unlikely.

“Won’t I get the new dress dirty?” she asks, looking up at him with one wide eye and holding out a strand of blood-matted hair with her uninjured arm.

He snags one strap of the duffel as he drops down to his knees again. “Dirty” is not a word or a concept he wants her to associate with herself. “You could never get anything dirty, _myshka_ ,” he murmurs to her. “You spread joy, not dirt. Everywhere you go.” He dips his fingers into a pouch and withdraws a garrote.

“But my hair…”

He gives her the little smile that is all for her. “That’s why we’re going to tie it up, out of the way, until we’re ready to wash it. Turn around for me?” It’s not the first time he’s used a garrote on a small child, and it’s not the first time he’s used one to gather up hair. Just— it’s the first time he’s used a garrote to gather up a small child’s hair. The wire is flexible enough for the task, though, and her hair is much easier to get up and out of the way than his own has ever been.

She stands with her back to him while he works, her looking into the fire, and him sweeping the blood-and-gold snarl of tangles and grease together in his hands, twisting it up into a loose bun, coiling the wire around it and looping the ends through the whole so that it will stay for a few minutes, even if the collar of the dress jostles the bundle.

As he works, he tries to block out the other times he’s been behind a child with a garrote in his hands. It’s hard to chase the images away and he’s only partially successful—he’d refused to do that at first, and that means his punishment is to remember it very clearly after he did it anyway, after… after they… he’s not sure what. Only knows that he refused to comply and then they made him comply anyway. And burned his compliance into his brain so he would remember it.

It’s easier, once her hair is up and he has her dress in his hands instead of the garrote. He’s never been forced to kill a child with a dress, though he can think of nearly a dozen ways to do that. And he’s helped his little mouse with dresses many times before. Usually on a tight deadline, with the General’s wife on her way up the stairs to fetch her down to greet guests, or her parents coming to collect her at the end of the summer.

His little mouse is highly skilled at ripping holes in clothing immediately before she has to be presentable. He’s had to learn to be equally skilled at maneuvering through the sartorial plague of buttons and bows that seem to multiply with each successive dress he encounters. He’s at least had time to get very good at it.

The dress they’ve packed up for her is a pale champagne pink, smells of the lavender detergent her perpetually terrified mother uses, and has tiny butter-yellow daisies embroidered all over it. It’s adorable, and once he has all the fucking buttons undone and can get it on her, she will look adorable wearing it. She always looks adorable, though. It’s not the dress that does it. It’s her fierce insistence on not being merely an adorable child, but a curious and crafty little mouse with so much more going on inside.

She starts to raise her arms up to help him get the dress over her head, but he gently guides them back down. “Down over your head first, myshka, then up from your waist. If your shoulder is feeling better, we should keep it that way, yes?” At her nod, he lowers the dress down, keeping the fabric well away from her hair, and then guides her arms down into the sleeves while pulling the top of the dress back up, injured arm first so that it has to move less.

“There we are. Turn again?” He taps her other shoulder, prompting her to turn around so he can tackle the buttons again, doing up all ten of them—and _why_ are there ten tiny, fiddly buttons when one easy zipper would accomplish the same thing, and do it better? He’d spare a thought to gripe about there being, just in general, too many buttons involved in children’s clothing, but he knows he has no room for trash-talking her buttons when his tac gear is the complicated network of buckles and straps that it is. Neither of them choose what they wear, after all.

After the dress, it’s essentially the same process as earlier, in reverse. He holds her underwear for her to step into, and then scrunches up her tights and slips them over her toes, one foot at a time, while she clutches at his shoulders for balance. Other than needing help with the feet, she can pull her own underthings on, though it takes her longer using just the one arm. He leaves her to it, while he makes the tea and mixes boiling water with cold to get something the Arm assures him is a nice temperature for washing her hair.

When he turns with the basin in one hand and a pitcher of rinse water in the other, she’s standing by the table looking at him with a confused little frown bending her lips. “I’m supposed to stand on a stool and bend over the sink, like at home.”

Yeah, that’s not happening. He’s drowned way too many people in kitchen sinks for that position to be an option for him while washing her hair. He does not need that set of muscle memories haunting him in juxtaposition to his little mouse’s care. Nope. Not a chance. It’s not that he would forget himself and slip—she’s his little mouse and he would never harm her—but there’s no need to court internal turmoil when it can be avoided. “It’s cold in the kitchen, _myshka_. We’ll go back to the fire, instead.”

She frowns but doesn’t argue with him, which is a boon he doesn’t look at too closely—gift horses and teeth, after all. Instead she just plops down on the sofa cushion he pulls to the floor for her, squirming around as directed until she’s on her back with her knees up and no concern at all for how the skirt of her dress falls to her hips. Further proof that she has not been hurt that way. He will devour every morsel of proof she offers him. Let her remain a child with no knowledge of exactly how horrible the world around her can be.

“Like this?” She lets her head drop back, looking at him upside down with her garrote-tied bun brushing the floor.

“Exactly like that, _myshka_.” He plucks the ends of the garrote loose and unwinds it from her hair, lifting her head with his flesh hand to support her neck as he does so. “Tell me if the water is too hot or cold. I can change it if you want.” When he’s got the basin scooted under his hand, he scoops a palmful of water over her scalp with the metal hand, locking the plates together so that any bits of blood or grime are trapped inside and won’t come loose into her hair.

Her response is a soft mumble and a sigh, her eyes drifting shut as she gives herself over to his care, and he smiles down at her, even though she won’t see it. There’s no need to count out his smiles for her—he will always have one more to give her, no matter how many he uses.

And then he loses himself a little, his mind drifting as he wets her hair, scrunching it in the water to loosen the crust of blood that has plastered the strands together. The water can turn red if it likes, because he’s got more to rinse with. The water could turn red, but it doesn’t. Just a little blood to get out, really, looking worse against the pale hair.

This is something he’s done many times, though not that he can remember the specifics of. Fingers combing gently through strands of hair floating on the surface, a little girl half-falling asleep as he massages a bit of soap into her scalp—and he switches hands for that, so that he can brush suds from her temples with the softer, yielding flesh fingers, so much easier to maneuver than the metal ones while the plates are locked up.

He’s held a little head in his palm, cradled it gently, bent his fingers to match the curve of head and neck. Hand just so, dipping to immerse the scalp in the water, keeping the ears clear, keeping the suds away from eyes. Fingers tracing along skin, clearing away soap, clearing away blemishes, a gentle fingertip trailing along the crease of a worried furrow between brows, smoothing it out, erasing the worry, bringing calm in its place.

This is what his hands should be used for, what he should do with his fingers, instead of what he so often does. But that can’t be helped. He is what he is. Does what he does. He’s not his own, and there is work to be done that only he can do.

There’s a comb in the duffel—clearly the work of his little mouse’s perpetually terrified mother; her father would never have thought of it—and so when he’s satisfied that her hair is clean, he lifts her head up from the basin, gently squeezes her hair over the bowl, and nudges the basin aside with a knee, settling his little mouse’s head on his towel-covered calf instead so that he can comb it out while she dozes.

This, also, is a thing he has done, though the motions were different when the girl is sitting upright and not prone like his little mouse is right now. With his little mouse, her hair has always been dry when he combed it out to remove the tangles before brushing it so that it would shine. But he’s combed out long hair when it was wet, too. Curlier hair. Brown hair. It’s nothing like combing his own hair, of course. With his hair—on those rare occasions when he’s permitted to comb it himself—it’s easiest to simply pull the comb through and be done with it. The prep teams, too, don’t bother with anything more delicate. Why would they?

But with hers, and with the other girl’s—the one he can’t quite place—he starts at the bottom, nudges the tangles downward past the ends of the strands until they fall out into nothing, and then moves up half an inch or so to convince the next row of knots to loosen and dissolve into orderly locks. It takes time, but he has time. She’s at least half asleep, and she needs whatever rest she can get. He won’t wake her up with a careless tug of the comb.

He loses track of just how long he sits there, her head in his lap, running the comb through her hair, root to tip, following the comb with a corner of the towel. Using his fingers the way they should be used, to bring comfort and not death. To smooth out the tangles of uneasy tension and leave peace in their wake.

Eventually, though, the Arm registers the cooling of the fire behind him, and he won’t let his little mouse catch a chill. He shifts from his position, gathering her up and settling her groggy little self at one end of the sofa, leaning against the arm, spreads a blanket across her lap, and then fetches her the tea and _kara kum_.

The fireplace poker is otherwise occupied, but it’s not an imposition to roll up his sleeve and reach into the fireplace with the Arm to nudge things around and make room for a new log. It hurts, but what doesn’t? The Arm won’t actually be damaged by heat for all his nerves scream to the contrary, and the little mouse will need a steady fire to warm herself by. Worthwhile.

Also worthwhile: taking the time to unpin Mustache bro, ignoring the “please, bro” and “bro, bro please” murmurs that assure him that at least one of his introductions between bro and agony has been well made. The poker comes out of the wall alright, but doesn’t want to come out of the bro without hooking a few too many loops of intestine, so he hauls the man off with the poker still inside. It’s better that way; he’ll live longer with the poker than without it.

Attic bro is already stiff, which is unsurprising. He’s not so stiff that he’s hard to maneuver off the stairs and into the bedroom with the others, though, and the body rounds out the little trio of garbage mafiosos nicely. A matched set in stages of departure from this life—already long gone, begging for the end around an iron bar, and wheezing hopefully around a crushed windpipe.

He’s tempted to call in a quick sitrep to the base near Perm, to instruct them to deliver the message to the General, just to alleviate any concerns the General has for the state of his granddaughter’s health. The phone is right there. But his little mouse will be hungry, even if she does have something to nibble on for now.

Instead, the Soldier returns his attention to the cupboard. She will need dinner. And while the General’s son _has_ contributed greatly to his library of culinary garbage facts, the Soldier’s cobbled that library together from a variety of sources, some of which were more concerned with nutrition, and less with candy. They will be more useful here.

The second most prolific source of culinary garbage facts was one of the field handlers a few years back who had wanted to be a chef when he grew up so he could work at some fancy restaurant in France. It hadn’t worked out for him, obviously, but he never got tired of telling kitchen tales during transport to and from ops, everything from hilariously inept injuries in pursuit of a perfect julienne to complicated spice profiles and the time he nursed something called a “fond” for so long the pan caught fire.

The key to learning about things like spherification, the exact amount of time to blanch specific vegetables, and the proper spacing of mushrooms in a saute pan is to pretend not to be paying any attention at all. And then to not let on otherwise to anyone who asks and isn’t specific enough in their line of questioning. If they don’t know he has a garbage fact, they don’t know they should be digging it back out and throwing it on the fire like the garbage it is.

The garbage facts come in handy, though, and not just as tips for killing people more effectively through the power of sage to distract from other tastes. The _kara kum_ , for instance, was an excellent garbage fact to trot out in service of his little mouse. She seems to like them as much as her uncle does, judging from how quickly she goes from nibbling on one end to cramming the brick of chocolate and crushed wafers into her mouth whole.

Good, so long as she doesn’t choke. She deserves to eat things that are tasty, especially after the last few days she has had.

His garbage facts offer up the appropriate ratio of liquid to oats for _kasha_ , the assessment that milk is the superior cooking liquid for tasty results, and the knowledge that water will do in a pinch. That’s lucky, since there is no milk in the dacha and plenty of well water just a few pumps of the handle away.

There is no garbage fact that tells him what to put into the _kasha_ once it’s cooked except for butter and sugar, though. There’s plenty of sugar in the cupboard—to be expected, since how else would one preserve fruit in the summers or make a passable _kompot?_ —but in the absence of butter… Another quick toss of the cupboard yields something labeled “creamer.”

It’s… vaguely familiar. There was a HYDRA agent in the 50s, a mole in the American branch who he simply never got an opportunity to kill—though not for lack of looking for such an opportunity—who was obsessed with brewing the perfect cup of coffee. He had a lot to say about creamer, all of it bad. But the gist of his complaints had seemed to be that creamer tasted sweet-rich-fat—which was, somehow, inappropriate for coffee as far as Agent Asshole was concerned.

It made perfect sense coming from HYDRA, however one sliced that loaf. Of course HYDRA would look at a beverage designed to be bitter and harsh, and then object to anything that made it easier to swallow. Ensuring that bitter pills stayed bitter was a typical bit of HYDRA operating procedure. Standard, even. Order didn’t come from pleasure, after all. It came from pain and power. Creamer doesn’t seem like it falls into either category.

Regardless, sweet-rich-fat is basically what butter would lend to a bowl of boiled oats. He turns the little jug of powdered creamer over in his hand, gives a mental shrug, and dumps some in. If people put this into their coffee to make it taste better, it will almost certainly appeal to a child who loves jammy cookies and _kara kum_.

He puts the pot on the second burner to cool a little—both to avoid burning his little mouse’s mouth and “to let the flavors mingle,” as that foodie handler once put it. He doesn’t know whether flavors actually mingle. Mingling seems a little too much like what people do at networking events to be ascribed to something as abstract and non-person as flavors in a pot of boiled oats. But the _kasha_ will be cooler for the small delay, even if the taste won’t improve much.

It is what it is, and what it is will have to do. He can’t make anything else here. His stockpile of garbage facts doesn’t have much to say about the rest of the possible ingredients in the little kitchen. Potatoes, vodka, salt, dried meats, pickled herring, raspberry jam, tea leaves. Not a lot to be getting on with, particularly when trying to appeal to a child whose stomach might be irritable after a long involuntary fast.

While the _kasha_ cools and the creamer… becomes friendlier with the rest of the pot’s contents, he supposes, he goes about assembling the things people have on their tables when they eat a meal. Normal things will help his little mouse feel more comfortable, and that is a priority. He can’t do anything about what she’s been through other than provide some sense of order and stability—and he knows exactly what a table setting looks like. Very neat. Very orderly. He can do precise like very few others.

A precise table setting—exactly what she needs, nothing more and nothing less—turns out to be a miscalculation on his part. She isn’t as well-versed in the fact of his non-personhood as he’d thought. Something about it sets off her sense of injustice. Another aspect of his little mouse that is good—so good—but not at all good _for_ her. And in this case, not great for him, either.

The General’s son hands him chocolates after stunningly successful missions, and means well. The man knows better, isn’t stupid, doesn’t have ignorance to fall back on, has every scrap of data on the Soldier’s care and feeding written up in hand-off notes. But while the General’s son reads those notes, while he knows and understands that any candy going down is making a round trip, he has never wrapped his mind around the notion that a treat for him, a treat for _people_ , would be a trap for the Soldier.

The General’s son wants to celebrate, wants to share, wants, perhaps, to bribe some sort of loyalty out of him by making him pretend to be a person with the right to things people enjoy. It’s as unnecessary as it is unsuccessful: The Soldier is already loyal to him, and doesn’t respond to bribery in any case.

And now he can feel that his little mouse is about to do something similar, for reasons that are the same as and opposite from those her uncle has. She’s brought her candy to the table. Has only eaten the one piece and not even opened the second. She’s clocked the table set for one and decided it’s not what she wants. She’s made a decision about something, and her determination to see that through is one of her many charms.

He suspects her decision is that he should eat one of those _kara kum_ , or possibly that he should sit down at the table like a person, maybe even eat those oats or drink a cup of tea. And he might manage the tea, if he left out the jam. But nothing about the rest of it is anything short of trap, writ in large, flashing letters.

She means well. She wants to share. She is secure already in his loyalty to her, and just wants him to… feel human, maybe. Like a person. It’s probable that she thinks it will be nice, enjoyable, allowable. Unlike the General’s son, she _does_ have the excuse of ignorance to fall back on. She doesn’t know, couldn’t know, has been purposely kept from knowing exactly how and why he is not a person to eat _kasha_ and _kara kum_ at a table, like he belongs there.

At the very least, she is not trying to buy his loyalty with chocolate. That makes it a little more bearable, a little less of a betrayal, something to get over with quickly—spoonful after spoonful until he can make his escape.

At the very least, there is no need to lie to her. He does, absolutely and incontrovertibly, need to contact her family. The General has to be relieved of any concerns for her safety.

The ability to put a solid door between himself and his little mouse is an added bonus. She will not have to witness the outcome of her decision, will not be confronted by his discomfort at her hands. She means so well.


	9. Soldat: She is made for better things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've finally upped the chapter count for the last time. There's surely no way one of the remaining chapters can expand enough to be cut into two pieces again. Surely.

**—Dacha outside of Pereslavl-Zalessky: Saturday evening, 21 November, 1970—**

He closes the door softly behind himself, projecting as much just-for-now and I’ll-be-right-back as he can in the motion, because his little mouse has her eyes on him and he can feel how much she doesn’t want him to leave the room. He’d turn right back around and go stand where she can see him, but he has to report. She is safe and the General _must_ know this. He has to report, for the General’s sake if for no official reason.

He also has to get rid of the _kasha_ without the little mouse seeing him do it, because those oats aren’t going to sit well after five weeks on IV nutrition and a handful of vitamin tablets downed on the drive up here, to say nothing of whatever leftover effects the trial drugs are having on his insides. He won’t have to put much effort into that process, though. That _kasha_ is all the way on the trap side of the treat-trap spectrum, and it can—and does—come up all on its own.

He sits back on his heels after several unpleasant minutes and sighs before reaching up to the side table for a glass of what appears to be and smells like water. His little mouse means so well. She shouldn’t see this, even if he suspects she’s hearing some of it. He’d hate to upset her, to give her any reason to feel bad for her actions. Far, far better that she eats her dinner and sleeps by the fire while he coughs up every last oat and nurses this water between bouts of retching.

Maybe if she sleeps deeply enough, he can spend some time in the kitchen cleaning up after he gets this report to the General, maybe finish the task of scraping blood out of the grooves of his metal hand over the basin of wash water. A few dabs of water will clear off the worst of the blood from his tac gear, and a splash or two for his face. He can make it quiet enough to not to wake her. He has a lot of practice being a silent, unseen presence in a room. A ghost, with various levels of disruptiveness.

He rinses his mouth out and spits once he’s reasonably sure everything is settled, then drinks some more of the water, reflecting unhappily on his little mouse’s attempts to mimic her elders. It’s a natural thing for children to imitate what they see, just another aspect of them learning how to be people as they grow up. She’d chosen a good model, too.

The General has lived a successful life, has survived and thrived through several wars and political shifts. Survived the purges and outlived Beria, laying low and building up reserves of power. He’s a good one to imitate, and his son’s had success with the imitation, at least in the Winter Soldier project and Department X on the whole. Why shouldn’t the little mouse see that success and try it on?

It’s better for her if she imitates those people, the General and her uncle, than her own parents. Her father is too eager to please and not discriminating enough in who he aims to please, is too caught up in being proper and respectable to too wide an audience. He’ll never get anywhere with that approach. Better to decide what he wants and then reach out and take it, since he’s allowed to want things. And his wife…

Well. _If you can’t say something nice._ He’ll just be pleased his little mouse doesn’t take after her and leave it there. The woman can’t help her fear, and there’s no reason for her to climb up over it and turn a braver face to the world. She’s not military, isn’t secret police, has no real experience with the monsters in dark shadows or the shadows themselves, what with the thin layer of protection her husband’s connections have afforded her to this point. Her only experience with monsters is _him_ —rumors of him, more accurately, since he hasn’t demonstrated his monstrosity to her.

Given those rumors and her own lack of experience, though, he can’t fault her for her crippling anxieties where he is concerned, for all he’s done nothing to inspire it. This is perhaps the reason _her_ displays of terror have never triggered the I’ll- _give_ -you-something-to-fear response in him that jittery handlers and support teams do. He’ll just be glad that she never managed to instill that trepidation in his little mouse.

He lets out a breath, judges that he’ll be uninterrupted by stomach ailments for the foreseeable future—it would be disrespectful to be sick while on the phone with the General—and reaches up to the side table to drag the phone down and dial. By now, the General will have arrived in Moscow, will have been delivered to his son’s apartment to wait for him to return their little mouse. He knows the younger politician’s number. It was part of the briefing.

Key facts from a mission briefing almost never go missing when he needs them; at least, not during the mission. They fall out during the post-mission wipe and are replaced by more current facts in the next briefing. This is the convection current of his mind, new information replacing old; old information sublimating beneath the new. Occasionally new and old facts will crash together to form something too sturdy to vanish on its own, something sturdy enough to require a deep halo session or… or worse.

This phone number will certainly go missing when it’s no longer needed. His little mouse, on the other hand, has probably turned into a small mountain range, the old summer interactions and the events of this mission stacking on top of each other and fusing together. It’s a pleasing thought, and he tucks it away to hold onto, inside where no one will see it and decide it needs to go.

There are three rings before the connecting click. He supposes it _is_ later at night than most people like to be awake, even if they should be expecting a call.

“H-hello?”

Ah. It’s the perpetually terrified wife. He should use her name, calm her down. People were sometimes, stupidly, calmer when he named them than when he gave them a designation. Perhaps because they didn’t understand that _targets_ got names so that he could zero in on them, could strike hard before fading into the shadows. Regardless, she won’t know that about the use of names in his mind, and might be put at ease if he calls her by name.

What _is_ her name, though. Does it matter? Yeva, maybe. That sounds right. Yeva… Yeva Stepa… Step… Ste— His head hurts, and he shrugs, gives up on the name as a thing he shouldn’t have access to. That happens sometimes, with some names. It truly doesn’t matter. He didn’t call for _her_. “Winter Soldier for the General.” There’s a loud yelp-thump-clatter as she drops the receiver, and then a bit of static, and then—

“My granddaughter?” The General, urgent and refreshingly straight to the point, though the Soldier doesn’t care for the undercurrent of worry in his voice. The General should never have cause to worry. He should have done better, been quicker; should have reported sooner.

He could start his report from the beginning, but it’s better to get the important things across first, to relieve that stress and anxiety the General feels. He has had two hours driving the M8 to be a furious and worried wreck. The General has had nineteen hours to do the same, and couldn’t even use driving the vehicle as a distraction. He will report accurately, but he will do so in a way that provides relief.

“Alive, intact.” Because “unhurt” would be a lie, even if there were some values of “unhurt” that would be accurate enough. “Resting by the fire.” And she would be, by now. Or should be. He knows how hungry she was, how fast she would have eaten. The shuffle outside the door earlier was probably the little mouse doing as he’d asked her once she heard him speaking. She doesn’t try to listen to reports the way the little minnow does.

“And her injuries?”

He casts a glare at the man struggling to suck in enough air to keep living. “Rope burns, bruises, very likely a concussion. Right shoulder strained, not broken, not dislocated. Dehydrated and exhausted when I arrived. She’s now had a bath, and also water, tea, chocolate, _kasha_.” He frowns. “There is no butter here, General. I used something called ‘creamer.’ It smelled like hazelnuts.”

“That’s fine, Soldier.” The General sighs, and there’s a creak of leather, probably the General settling back in a chair, letting go of some tension. That’s good. The General should not have cause to stress when the Soldier is there to do his bidding. “You did well,” he continues, voice calmer. Good, except…

The praise burns through him hotter than his earlier rage and bitter as ash. He doesn’t deserve it. He has not done well enough to be praised. They hit her because she bit them. She bit them because he taught her how to do it. He has tried not to think about what they might have done to her—what _Borya_ might have done, whichever of them he is—if she had been gentle and compliant, had not put up a biting struggle. If she’d been a timid little lady and not a feisty little mouse.

It doesn’t change the fact that _he_ is the reason they struck her face. His lessons.

But he cannot contradict the General. The General says he did well, and he cannot speak against the General, even if he doesn’t ag— If he hasn’t done— He can’t even _think_ a contradiction of the General’s praise, apparently, other than to know that it’s praise he doesn’t merit, hasn’t earned. The General is being kind and he isn’t worthy of that.

“Soldier?”

“Apologies, General. I was… I got lost in my head.”

“It happens.” The General’s voice is soothing-smooth-encouraging. More kindness that he doesn’t deserve. “What else of note where Maria is concerned?”

He swallows some water. “She bit one of them. They hit her for it. And she saw two of them, after I’d gone through them. There was a lot of blood, some entrails. She was calm in the moment, but she will have nightmares, General. I’m sorry. I should have cleaned up the mess before she saw it.” It’s an admission of failure. He can afford to do that with the General, to hold out his failures for inspection and see what it gets him in return. Sometimes reprimand, sometimes discipline, but often advice on doing better in the future, so that he doesn’t fail the next time. It’s a risk worth taking.

There’s a considering noise on the other end of the line, and a bold little part of him dares to wonder what the General is thinking. He doesn’t ask. If the General wishes to share his thoughts, he will share. Otherwise, it’s not for him to know, or is perhaps for him to discover later.

“That’s unfortunate, what she saw,” the General finally says. “But she will no doubt see worse, in time.”

“Does she _have_ to?” The words slip out without his consciously saying them, and it’s too late to pull them back. There _will_ be a reprimand for that. He’s sure of it. The question there is _when_ , not _if_.

The General ignores the protest, acting as though the words were never uttered. “What is your timeline for returning to Moscow, Soldier? Summarize. I’ll take your full report later, on the train back to Perm.” The reprimand will come later, then. Not now. Kindness, again. Undeserved, again. 

The General is so kind where he deserves harsh treatment, so forgiving where he has warranted no such thing. He doesn’t understand why, though it’s not his place to understand, only to obey. He performs better with a steady hand, even when the hand strikes him. But this is the General, whose hands are the steadiest. And this is not an official mission. And the General does know best how to manage him. If this is what the General has decided, then it is the best course of action.

“It will be a two-hour drive back, General. She needs restful sleep and is more likely to get that here than on the road. I plan to monitor her sleep for signs of disturbance until the snow stops. Then back to Moscow. I know the address.”

“Mm. That will do, Soldier. No need to check in before departure.”

“Understood.” The General has not demanded that he account for his lack of report before leaving Moscow, has not demanded that he report before his return to give them a window of time in which to expect him, has not ordered a full report of his activities. The General will want to know all these things, but trusts him to keep the details safe until there is time for them. _That_ is a little sliver of job-well-done that he _does_ deserve. He allows himself to bask in that a little bit, just for the minute or so of silence the General leaves between them. He is allowed to pick up praise when it’s been earned, doesn’t have to leave it where it falls. 

“…Soldier.” It’s not a question, but it signals a question on the way. And it doesn’t require a response, but the General will appreciate one nevertheless, since he has no visual confirmation of the Soldier’s attention. He can always tell these things, even over the phone, can see in his mind what will please the General.

“Yes, General.”

“Your assessment.” He sounds tired. “Why did they target Maria?”

He takes his time with the answer, going over what he’s learned from the assorted mafiosos and also pulling the General’s actual question—was this directed at my son _…_ or at _me?_ —to the surface. “Money. They are gathering funds to relocate to America. Two of them have spoken about the logistics of such a relocation. There is a Russian-English dictionary with the handguns in the attic. Ratty pages. Dog-eared. Maps of the Eastern Seaboard.”

He pauses, giving his mind time to form the unpleasant words that come next and shove them out from between his lips. “If they had wanted to hurt you, General, they’d have killed her and let you know afterward. With visuals.”

 _They’d have sent you a message the way_ you _send messages, General_ , he carefully does not say.

The General is not above doing what must be done. If someone needs to know a thing, needs a reprimand, needs correction, the General will see that it happens. If that requires a death in the family, the demise of a dear friend, engine failure on a passenger jet, so be it. Unlike some of the others who occasionally hold his leash, the General prefers for these messages to be sent quickly, cleanly. The General doesn’t like wasting time or resources, and so most of his messages come in the form of high-caliber bullets through skulls, with the odd grenade shot into a car full of diplomats. It’s nothing personal. But however personal it is _not_ for the General, the message is always personal for the intended recipient. 

There’s a frustrated grumble on the other end of the line. “They had _no_ political aims? None at all?”

“Maybe someone higher up. A main branch. These four couldn’t have held onto a political motivation if they had five hands apiece.” He looks over again, at the three bodies across the room. One dead of a broken neck, a mistake on his part. One with a throat too crushed to speak clearly, though he could still coax something from it with enough creativity, just not something of informational value. One still trying beg for the end, though it hasn’t gotten him anywhere. That one would probably talk if he thought it would buy him a quicker death.

“One of them,” he says, “is still in good enough shape to get answers out of, if he knows anything.” It’s an offer, one he doesn’t have to spell out, one the General may or may not take him up on.

The General makes a noise in his throat, not dismissive, but clearly signaling the lack of necessity. “Don’t bother unless you need the outlet, Soldier.”

“Understood.”

There’s a rattle as the General hangs up, then a dial tone. He puts the receiver back on the hook and reaches up to put the phone itself on the side table where it belongs, leans back against the table leg, looks across the room at the stack of garbage mafiosos. He takes a sip of water.

The two who still live could survive a good deal more pain, if he dealt it out carefully enough. But would it provide an outlet, necessary or otherwise? He doubts it.

It would have, earlier. Before he saw his little mouse and all the angry need to tear them to pieces had leaked out of him. If he tried, he might still be able to enjoy hurting these men, for what they did to her, what they threatened to do to her, what they _could_ _have_ done to her. That notion—the prospect of what they _could_ have done to her—had managed to fan the smoldering ashes of anger left over inside him into a short-lived inferno, but even that had collapsed with a shake of his little mouse’s head and her voice saying “no.”

No amount of anger had the strength to last once the _could_ -have-done was followed by _didn’t_ -do. At one point in time, it would have pleased him to rip off strips of their skin and flesh, to pull them apart at every joint, just for that might-have-been that in any kind of decent world would never have been a consideration. But what would please him infinitely more _now_ would be to put eyes back on his little mouse and remind himself that she is safe and whole.

The men will die on their own, without his help, even Hand bro with the crushed throat at this point. They will linger as long as they are able, caught up in that human will to survive—even the one who wanted death would still instinctively fight for life; he knows _that_ firsthand and he’s not even a person. They would linger and struggle, and then flicker out like candles when the wax finally runs dry. He’s broken them down too far for them to come back without help, and no one is here to help them.

Just to be sure, though—he isn’t careless enough to leave a final kill tally to chance, and there are the two members of their bratva still unaccounted for—he slits their throats before closing their tomb back up and washing thoroughly in the basin of water in the kitchen, using a potato brush to get in between the grooves of his metal hand and under the nails of his flesh hand. It’s obviously not the intended purpose of a potato brush, but he doesn’t particularly care at the moment, and no one who _would_ care is any position—namely, breathing—to complain.

He’s surprised he doesn’t feel cheated by the trio of quicker-than-originally-planned deaths he’s brought about today. Surprised, but only a little. He had decided they would die, and die they did. Just not on the timeline he’d had in mind while his rage still held the reins.

They’d all three—all four, really; Blond bro was certainly one of the group—suffered considerable trauma on their way to the end. Sure, he could have done more, could have inflicted worse, could have made a bigger mess of their bodies while he worked, long after the necessity of decommissioning them was past. But, really, what would have been the _point_ of that? That isn’t his style, dragging a mark’s death out beyond what is needed. Isn’t something he’s ever developed a taste for up to this point. Not something he’s interested in developing a taste for going forward, either.

Torture for the sake of revenge or pleasure just isn’t him, except perhaps in a brief flash of rage. Torture, he would like to think, is something external to him, something outside of him, something others do _to_ him. It is not something he wants to have lurking within to pull out and inflict on others. At best, torture is a tool he can be and has been commanded to use, one he puts back down at his first opportunity. It’s far easier to accept pain than to dole it out for its own sake, to inflict it without purpose or meaning.

There were exceptions, extenuating circumstances, times when it was necessary to cause pain to get results—witness the garbage mafia’s quartet of crippled corpses, one tortured for information, the other three incapacitated as painfully as he could manage as he cleared the dacha—but he always tries to be practical about it and not… not _overly_ gleeful. Not inappropriately happy about it. There are plenty of garbage people on his assorted field teams who relish that sort of thing whenever they have the chance to do so, and most of them are HYDRA. That alone is reason to eschew torture as entertainment.

He prefers the General’s methods. Clean and quick, efficient, cost-effective. He isn’t always given the option of extinguishing his targets cleanly and quickly. It will always depend on the message that needs to be delivered, who he is delivering it for—some of the handlers with access to him are sick deep inside, are damaged, are twisted up, are garbage. And he follows their orders, sure, but he doesn’t have to like it.

But when he _is_ given a choice, he prizes efficiency over flamboyance. Even in this instance, when it would have been a simple thing to draw out their deaths another hour or two merely by leaving their throats unslit until it was time to leave. There had been time for that and no extra effort required; his little mouse needed her sleep, and so they wouldn’t leave for hours yet. But that wasn’t a good enough reason to hold onto vindictive anger, to try scraping it back up from where it had spilled out.

He had made them hurt when he needed to, he’d made that last a while so he could take care of his little mouse, and now he is moving on. Just as it should be. Anything more isn’t _him_ , it’s… it smells of HYDRA, rotten deep down and corrupting everything it touches. Fuck HYDRA. They can’t have him. Can’t have what’s _left_ of him, after… everything.

He inspects his hands one last time, gives his tac gear a quick once-over with the brush and with a damp rag to clean up what the snow couldn’t, and sends a few positive thoughts in the direction of the team responsible for the material development behind this tac gear. He remembers earlier designs that had seemed to be more sponge than leather based on how well they carried blood in the weave of the fabric, thick and heavy even hours later. Good for not leaving a blood trail during exfil after a particularly close-range hit. Terrible for cleanup afterward. This is much better. And hey—two full sleeves, even if there are two holes in one of them now.

The second sleeve, he notes as he idly pokes a finger through the hole at his forearm, does not make up for the lack of a grenade on this op, though it tries—it would have been a lot more tedious getting the potato brush in every tiny crevice along the Arm’s triceps if the Arm had been bare back in that secretary’s office. But no second sleeve, or even a first sleeve, could satisfy like a grenade could.

There are probably enough bits and pieces of wire in the shed out behind this hideous chicken dacha to rig a timer setup. He could have done that and then used a grenade to blow that fucking metal chicken right off his rooftop perch, and been so far away with his little mouse when the timer went off that she wouldn’t even wake up for it. Or maybe she could have watched, could have clapped her little hands together in the chill night air and marveled at the glow of the resulting fire against the pristine backdrop of glistening white snow in the moonlight.

Explosions are things of great beauty. Why else would fireworks exist? They are the civilian’s grenades, the peaceful rockets launched into the night sky, the pacifist’s bomb of choice. Glorious things, really. All the beauty, very little of the shrapnel and screaming. Most of the time. They’re pretty easily used to kill and maim, too. 

But there are no grenades here, or fireworks. As it is, he’ll have to settle for manually setting the place on fire when they leave. Fuck torture and fuck HYDRA. A pile of ashes where team bro expects to find guns and drugs? _That’s_ a message he’s interested in sending. And there’s enough buffer between this dacha and the others that between that and the snow, a little targeted arson shouldn’t bring the whole neighborhood down. 

Though with the ratio of chickens to rooftops, it might not be terrible if the whole neighborhood _did_ go up in flames.

It’s temping.

He decides he will consider it, come to a conclusion later. 

Satisfied with his cleanup, he dumps out and refreshes the water basin, pumps fresh water into the pitcher in case his little mouse wakes up thirsty, and goes to sit against the wall to the side of the fire, a scant three feet from his slumbering little mouse. It is an ideal vantage point for a vigil, to observe her, make note of any troubled notes in her sleep. 

The Arm registers the radiant temperature coming from the hearth as one that is only just shy of ideal given the little mouse’s distance and her nest of blankets. It might be efficient to put a new log in there, but he won’t choose an efficient option that could make his little mouse uncomfortably warm while she sleeps. He’ll know when the fire dies enough to be an insufficient heat source in need of fuel.

Until then, he leans his head back against the stonework and pulls his knees up to rest his elbows on. He stares directly ahead, studying the tumble of golden waves glittering in the firelight, his little mouse’s hair, clean, vibrant, unspoiled by the blood that had matted it up only a few hours prior.

Unacceptable, that her hair or any other part of her should be smeared with blood, should bear the traces of violence, should reflect anything less than the gentleness inside her. Hers is a fierce sort of gentle, it’s true, full of fight. But while there’s fight, there’s no violence; she’s defiant, but unwilling to cause harm except under duress. But…

“She will no doubt see worse, in time,” the General had said.

He will not—cannot—contradict the General, can’t deny his assessment, can’t insist that she never see even as much evil as she has the past two days, let alone more. Can’t demand that she be protected from such things, shielded from the bloody spatter he and others like him leave in their wake.

Oh, but if he _could_.

If he could do more than question, more than just ask if she has to, more than silently allow the conversation to move past his objection and wait for the reprimand to appear for his infraction.

The General loves the little mouse, loves his granddaughter, wants what is best for her. But the General knows and accepts that her life will be a violent one, and the Soldier…

He loves her, too. And he _can’t_ accept that her life is inevitably so full of blood and entrails, of dying men, of fear-pain-danger. It isn’t right. She is too precious for that, is too kind, is not that kind of mouse. She is made for _better_ things, damn it. She is made for so much _more_ than that.

He presses his knuckles, flesh and metal both, to his eyes, holds them there as he breathes deep, slow breaths, not as steadily as he would like; holds them there to keep back all the emotions that threaten to spill out, the emotions he is not entitled to, does not have clearance for, shouldn’t even be capable of.

Pretend; fake it. Breathe.

Pretend that he is satisfied with the course his little mouse’s life will run, the direction the General suspects her life will take her, the things she will have to see, experience, _do_.

God, the things she might have to do. It isn’t right. She’s made for more than that.

But breathe. Pretend he is okay—pretend she will _be_ okay—and maybe it will happen. It always works except when it doesn’t.

It could work. She could be okay. _Will_ be okay. _Has_ to be okay. He just has to… Has to pretend that she will be fine, that his little mouse will survive whatever comes her way, will come through the other side still _herself_ , untarnished, intact, precious.

 _Please_ , he thinks, sucking in uneven breaths, _let it work. Let her be okay, let her be herself._

She is made for _better_ things.


	10. Soldat: How the precious things cling

**—Dacha outside of Pereslavl-Zalessky: Saturday evening, 21 November, 1970—**

He has sat like this before, back to a wall, knees up, face in hands, chest tight. He’s sat exactly like this before, a little over arm’s reach from a girl sleeping on a sofa. Or a bed, maybe. Or just a cot. He’s sat this way, trying to breathe steadily in and out, no harsh catches in his throat that could wake the girl he was watching over. Sitting vigil on her, like she could slip from his fingers at any moment.

Mourning before the end, he supposes. But when? Why?

The only deaths he’s overseen are the ones he brings with him and hands out to targets and collateral alike. The ultimate year-round Krampus. It’s ridiculous to think for a second that he has ever been an angel of anything but death. Certainly not a guardian spirit. Just a ghost. Poltergeist.

But he’s done this. He’s sure of it. Done this more than once, for more than just one little girl. There is a flash of half-blurred imagery across his mind, interlaced with the pain of move-away, step-back, mind-on-something-else warnings that linger at the edges of the many gaping holes in his memories. A boy. Small, light-boned, blond, blue-eyed. Nose and ears too big for his face, knuckles bloody, lip split. Fierce like his little mouse, but eager to start a fight, any fight, if it was for a good cause…

…coughing?

The Soldier rubs his knuckles at his eyes with a tiny groan, trying to fend off the throbbing headache behind them. Better to back away, retreat from things he’s only half sure of into the arms of things he knows to be entirely true. The only little boy he _knows_ is the little minnow, and he takes after his father. Dark hair, sturdy bone structure, nearly a teenager now, and learning to pick his battles, to fight underhanded, to fight with words and plans, and not with fists and impulses. Hasn’t been sick a day in his short life, at least not that the Soldier knows of.

He takes a deep breath and spends a moment indulging in self-disgust. Ah, fuck. How did he even end up lost in these thoughts? He knows better than to wander around in the dark places. The General has taught him how to avoid exactly this sort of spiraling obsession with imagined events and people. What he needs is time in his chair, time under the halo, a round or three of the words read out of the book.

Something to settle the jumble in his head, something to clear out the cobwebs of things that might have been, but probably never were. Something to let him focus on the important things, the precious things, like his little mouse. Like getting her safely back to Moscow, where her family waits for her.

Where the General waits. With his plans for her.

With his ideas about what their little mouse might encounter in her life. With his acceptance of that despite his love for her, despite her being one of his favorites. After another firm dig of knuckles along orbital bones, the Soldier lets his head fall back against the wall again, his forearms propped on his knees, hands hanging limply from loose wrists.

He supposes she could grow a stomach for it, could grow into the violence the General hinted she would see, could grow up to follow her grandmother’s steps, perhaps, be an agent with one of the many branches within Department X. Leviathan, maybe. He doesn’t know which of the sub-departments the General’s wife had been attached to before retiring. Something in research, in espionage, something not quite as steeped in blood as the Winter Soldier project.

He’s never been handed the details on the exact role Vera Mikhailova has played, and has never sought them out. The General’s wife does not welcome curiosity the way the General does, and her animosity toward him is as sharp as her letter opener, and never far below the surface. He doesn’t mind. It’s not his place to try earning her favor. He belongs to the General, not her.

But while the Winter Soldier project itself is the last thing he would wish on his little mouse, is any other option within Department X intrinsically better? Or outside of it? At least in Department X she would have a counterpart in the little minnow. As much as he hates to admit it, that might possibly be the safest place for her, given her family, given her proximity to fucking HYDRA, given the pit of backstabbing vipers that the KGB at large tended to be when one peeled back the covers and took too close a look at one’s bedfellows.

Better, perhaps, for her to have her cousin for support, to support him in turn, to have them both tucked into the shadow government instead of out in the open and vulnerable to predation by the more generic threats of the world. He would be better able to watch over them if they were in Department X.

Of course, that conjecture is discounting the way HYDRA is steadily worming its way into everything, burrowing through the ranks from the top down, taking over where they can, sabotaging where they can’t. Her world isn’t going to be a safe one even if the General lives forever, like _he’s_ doomed to do.

And after the General dies… what will be left to keep the worst of it held back? To keep every arm of military and government from mutating into a fucking HYDRA tentacle and strangling the entire stretch of the Soviet Union, his little mouse right alongside the others? Not the General’s sons, handler, politicians, military researcher or otherwise.

Maybe the little minnow can, if his father could keep him safe long enough to grow into his position, if he had loyal support. If he has the little mouse at his side. But if the General himself hasn’t been able to do it, the Soldier doesn’t see how his grandchildren stand a better chance, even united.

A whimper from his little mouse breaks his unauthorized thought process—it’s not his place to ponder these things, or to question the General’s strategies, and that’s the _second_ noncompliant rabbit hole of thoughts he’s fallen down in so short a time, what is _wrong_ with him?—and he smoothly shifts from his knees-up resting position to kneel in front of the sofa with a frown. She needs her sleep, if she’s to recover from the stress of her recent ill treatment.

Her little fists flail about, trying to knock away nightmare opponents along with her blanket nest, and he catches them up in his hands, gently tucks her arms back close to her chest, and gathers her up into his own arms. She is a weightless wisp of precious cargo in his arms as he stands with her held to his chest, sways from one foot to the other as he turns in place, murmuring softly and wordlessly, and finally sitting when her own wordless, hiccuping sobs settle back into little whimpers.

He’s done this before. He could swear that he has, even if he can’t place the _when_ of it. The _why_ of it. The _who_.

He’s done this before, has sung this song before—didn’t even clock when he started singing, and _does_ he sing? Is that a thing codename Winter Soldier is capable of doing? Apparently, it _is_ , and he _does_ … Has done it before. It is one of the familiar mystery things, those actions he performs without thinking about them, without consciously deciding to do them, without ever having done them before, except that he must have, because he’s good at them.

It’s not his place to judge music, not even to gauge whether it is enjoyable music, except that the General has very specific tastes and he has made a list of them to refer to if there should ever be a cause to select music for him. The General loathes whistling, for instance, and is not terribly fond of brass. He prefers woodwinds and strings with minimal percussion. Just one of those quirks that people are permitted to have.

The little mouse has clearance to judge music, and she must find the music he is making to be enjoyable, or at least soothing, based on the way she burrows further into him, her fingers digging at his tac gear as though to reassure herself that he is real. That’s good, that she seems to find his music soothing. That is the point. This is a lullaby. He knows that well enough, even if he has never heard this one before.

Has never done this before, has never rocked a little girl in his arms and stroked his fingers through her hair, has never sung songs to her in a bid to offer comfort and protection from the monsters her sleeping mind conjures up.

Except…

Maybe…

Maybe there was…

He squints into the flames. It’s foggy. Just a dimly lit wisp of might-have-been. Hardly even enough to ask anyone about. But there was… maybe… a long time ago… another little girl. A little girl with brown curls instead of blonde waves. And maybe he sang to her.

This faint impression doesn’t hurt like the earlier one, the blond boy with the bloody knuckles. This one is just… there. Faintly. On the edges of his perception. Waiting for him, perhaps. Waiting to see if he’ll keep going, take a few more steps, get close enough for it to strike.

He stares at the fire with its flickering orange and yellow glow, and ponders the half-formed fragment as he holds his little mouse close and rocks her, smoothing his fingers over her hair, singing low and soft, soothing. He stares at the fire as if it will show him more of the whole, not just the fragment. As if it will light up the lost bits and nudge them into an actual memory. As if. It’s only fire. It doesn’t have any answers for him.

But. He sang to a little girl with brown curls. Maybe. Maybe he sang to her.

It doesn’t sound like something he’d have been ordered to do during a prior mission. It _does_ sound like something he would have done outside of a mission, if the little girl with brown curls had been afraid, or had been hurt, or had been sick. Maybe she had been sick. That feels… right. It feels like something that happened, or that could have happened.

So. He sang to a little girl with brown curls, while she was sick and needed to sleep, to get her strength back. Probably. He probably sang to her.

It’s not certain. When it comes to his recollection of anything, nothing is ever certain. He’s not the most reliable source for memories of the past, even—especially—his own. But this seems likely, seems like it could have happened, seems like it might have happened. Maybe even probably happened.

And it doesn’t hurt, exactly, to think about it. It’s not pain in the present; it’s pain-to-come, pain further down the path, pain waiting for him if he keeps wandering along the trail. Pain waiting to see if he’ll do it, if he’ll keep on going, if he’ll get close enough for it to strike.

He wonders who she had been, this little girl with the brown curls. Not just who she was to him, but who she _was_. Whether she is alive somewhere, whether she’s well now, whether she remembers him better than he remembers her.

He sits on the sofa, holding his little mouse in his arms, singing mystery words to a tune he doesn’t recognize but that crawled up out of one of the vast empty stretches inside himself that he knows better than to poke at. He sits, and he sings words he doesn’t consciously hear, words that his mouth makes but that his ears turn away from because that way lies pain and hollow places that will devour him if he pays them any attention.

And he can’t let himself be devoured by the emptiness inside of his skull, can’t allow it close enough to strike, can’t let anything reach out from inside the gaping pit of his ravenous not-memories and pull him down, steal him from his little mouse. She needs him. He will not abandon her, even to investigate the siren song of another little girl, a sick little girl, with brown curls.

He sits, he sings, he comforts _this_ little girl, his little mouse, and he hopes that the other one, the sick one with the brown curls, is alive, is safe, is well… and doesn’t remember him at all. Because if she remembers him and he isn’t there, if she still needs him and he’s gone, if she’s counting on him and he’s letting her down by being here instead of there, now instead of then… That would be horrible.

And it’s hard, so hard, to turn away from the maybe-memory, the might-have-happened. Even without knowing who she is, without knowing for certain that she is, or was, real… He doesn’t want to abandon the girl with the brown curls, who coughs and coughs, and demands stories from her sickbed, and calls him…

…calls him…

…calls him _something_. Not Soldier. Something else. Something with a softer meaning and a harder sound, harder consonants, not the slippery sibilant that starts his designation. Something that sounds… It sounds…

He can’t place it, the sound of it. Can’t hear it, the word she has for him, the _name_ she gives him. As if he is a person, is someone who has a name. Someone who deserves a name. Laughable.

His head throbs with the sound he can’t remember, that he can’t let himself remember, or it will strike, it will wrap itself around him and drag him off, a triumphant wolf hauling some mangled bit of prey across the snow and into its den, to present to its pack or feed to its cubs. He’s not used to being prey. He’s used to being the wolf.

Ah, well. For all that he doesn’t want to abandon her, he edges away from the path to the girl with the brown curls—a fragment of memory, maybe, or a figment of his imagination, but dangerous for him, either way—and sends his apology back over the void he’s fleeing from. _So long, little brown-curled girl. I’m sorry. I’m_ so _sorry, but my little mouse needs me now. Maybe later._

The fire is as good as any moon to howl at, and here is a cub, a little mouse, _his_ little mouse, to sing to. Not prey. She will never be prey. He will kill anyone who tries to make her prey, tries to hurt her, succeeds at hurting her.

So he sits, and he sings, and he rocks her even long after she’s peacefully asleep. His eyes trace the lines of her lashes, and the little folds of her fingers as she clings to his tac gear in her sleep. And he looks at her hair as it shines in the fire’s light, and at her cheek with its infuriating bruise that he would wipe away if he could, that he’d take on his own face to spare hers if that was possible, that he would do anything to prevent in her future.

They struck her because she bit them. He taught her that. He remembered it, after seeing the spent bandaging, after seeing the marks she left behind. He remembers how her little teeth had gnawed and worried at his arm until she understood, until she managed to get past the desire not to hurt him—such a gentle soul, his little mouse—and decided to learn the lesson well.

He taught her how to bite anyone who wanted to hurt her, and they hurt her for it.

There are precious things in the world. He’s often excluded from them, as is only right—everything about him would only tarnish them, corrupt them, splash filth where the precious things should be kept safe and pure. His little mouse is one of the precious things. And the bruise on her face is proof that he can only ever damage the precious things he encounters.

But… How is he supposed to sit back and keep watch at a distance? How is he supposed to observe and not step in and lift her out of whatever mess she assembles for herself? Or whatever mess hunts her down? She is a curious little mouse, sneaking wherever she wants to sneak, putting her little paws into all kinds of trouble. A headstrong little mouse, always scurrying into a new adventure, always sniffing out the next trap to spring.

And if the General anticipates she will see more of this—more of his work, specifically, or more violence in a general sense—then she needs to be able to defend herself. To truly, thoroughly, comprehensively defend herself, not just hold her enemies off with the threat of a little bite. She needs _real_ defenses. She needs to be able to protect herself if he is not there to do it for her, because he cannot be everywhere, however much he wishes he could.

He started that, however long ago when the dacha smelled of apples and tomato blossoms. He gave her a tool to use to drive an attacker off, but just the one tool. Effective, but incomplete. There hadn’t been time for more than that, and… And he’d hoped she would never even need that much. He wouldn’t go back and withhold the lesson. Wouldn’t change his advice to her. Even if her path in life was to be a painter, or a musician, or an author of terrible poetry.

It wasn’t a mistake in the apple orchard. But… But there’s the bruise, looking back at him, proof that he chose, if not the wrong course of action, then at least not the ideal one, not the perfect one, not the _right_ one that would have protected her. Anything less than perfect is not good enough when her safety is at stake.

It boils down easily enough. He failed her, and she suffered for it.

Or: She suffered.

That’s fact enough. And it takes him out of the equation, as he’ll be if she runs into a similar situation and he’s off killing people in Canada or starting a war in the tropics. It’s a fact, and it’s the important thing. Her, not him. She suffered.

But if she hadn’t bitten them, if she hadn’t shown her teeth, who is to say what _else_ she might have suffered? He has no reason to doubt that blond idiot in Moscow. His terror had been more accurate than any polygraph. One of the men here, Borya, whichever that had been, was the sort of degenerate garbage person who would lust after a child. If a fully armed support team is wary of getting too close to his face because of a few missing fingers here and there over the course of years, surely a miserable disgusting garbage person would be cautious of getting too near a child who bites every time.

He shakes his head and chooses not to ponder the what-if any further. She says that it didn’t happen. He will believe her.

And he will make another maybe-wrong, not-ideal choice. Give her a bigger arsenal of self-defense. Perhaps if he is to shadow the General for another summer. There would be time, then. This is a thing he would not forget, even if it is a year before he next has an opportunity. His little mouse can bite, and that might have saved her from further harm this time, but mice have claws, too. It might be good for her to know how to use a knife, and where to put a blade, to keep a man from hurting her.

Or, since her father might not allow her to carry a knife—fool man and his preoccupation with reputational damage—perhaps he should teach her instead how and where to kick, how to twist a man’s finger until the joints pop open and the ligaments tear and rupture. How to gouge out a man’s eye or tear his nostril open. How to turn anything in reach into a weapon, if she needs one.

There will be time for it. He will make time for it. He doesn’t care if her parents like it. And he’s half sure the General would approve.

She whimpers softly in her sleep, stirs against his chest but doesn’t wake, and he resumes the song he does not know, given to him by the girl with the brown curls, who he also does not know. Her fingers worm under another strap of his tac vest and hold tight, and she settles in against him with a sigh, pressing her uninjured cheek against the leather.

Sometimes the precious things cling where they shouldn’t. Sometimes they get damaged, tainted by the monsters they embrace. They should be equipped to defend themselves. Fully equipped. For complete defense. And fuck what anyone has to say about the lack of propriety.

It’s the least those monsters can do in return.


	11. Soldat: What he can do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigh. This was supposed to be a 400 word scene, just for flavor, just to fill in a little gap between the dacha and the ending chapter and Coda. If I wasn't so close to the end of this story, I'd give up on anticipating how many total chapters this would be and just change the chapter totals to a question mark. This time, though, I'm really sure. Thirteen chapters. Just thirteen. Seriously.

**—Government apartment building in Moscow: Saturday late, late evening, 21 November, 1970—**

The perpetually terrified wife looks at him.

It is a first, he thinks. He knows he’s never looked directly at her, but he thinks she also has never looked directly at him.

He stands in the open doorway, looks down at the General’s son who opened the door for him, and looks beyond him into the apartment… and there in the middle of the front room is the perpetually terrified transcriptionist, wife to the General’s son, mother to the little mouse, all-around hands-down winner for the contest of Moscow’s most fearful, _looking at him_ over her husband’s shoulder. He would blink in surprise, but his reaction to surprise has been well-trained, and remains internal.

The Soldier has his little mouse in his arms, perched on a hip with the Arm supporting her, her head nestled into the crook of his metal shoulder, cushioned by the leather of the second sleeve, her breath even and warm against his neck, her fingers clutching his tac gear in her sleep, her legs dangling loosely in time to his movements.

She’s too precious to wake up for something as pointless as climbing five flights of stairs. Why make her do that when she weighs so little and it is no imposition to carry her the distance? Why wake her up at all when she could continue to slumber, and… And when he can soak up her trust for as long as he can, to feel less like the monster he knows himself to be? If only for a few more moments, just another minute or two.

His little mouse’s perpetually terrified mother is _looking at him_. She raises her hands to wipe at her red-rimmed eyes, cups her fingers over her mouth to catch a sob of relief.

He looks past her to the General, sitting in a well-upholstered chair by the window with a glass of vodka; meets his eyes and then looks toward the part of this home that is the little mouse’s bedroom. The General merely nods and takes another sip. It’s confirmation enough. Permission-granted, do-as-you-like. Perhaps a reward for the safe return of his granddaughter.

The General’s son stands back from the door to let him enter, and the man’s perpetually terrified wife sways on her feet and looks at him.

Perhaps he is meant to hand his bundle of little mouse over now that his mission objective has been met. But the General nodded, and is still looking, watching, assessing. He doesn’t have to hand his little mouse over to her father, doesn’t have to set her down at all, doesn’t have to wake her. So he ignores the younger politician—the man is eminently ignorable—walks past him, lets the door close behind him and seal up this little family unit: the patriarch, his son, his daughter-in-law, his granddaughter, his Soldier.

No. That’s a dangerous thought, and he casts it right out of his head and onto the trash heap before it has a chance to sink in.

He belongs to the General, absolutely. That is one of the big-T truths in life, that he is the General’s to do with as he will. But he is not part of the General’s family. Not a member of this tribe, not someone who belongs, not a _person_ invited to gather around the fire of the home-hearth and be accepted as one of them, even if he does come bearing precious cargo.

He is, at best, a loyal hound the General might deign to allow at his feet, might toss the occasional scrap of praise. A hunting dog, maybe; a guard dog. Perhaps a tamed wolf. But not a person. Never that. No society would welcome a _person_ who does the things he does, who commits the atrocities he has committed. Not even a garbage society filled with garbage people. The worst of people would reject him if he were a person, but a tool is always welcome. It is better that he’s not a person. A gift, not being a person.

Better that he is a tool, a weapon, a machine in the shape of a person, with all the external trappings of personhood, but none of the inner working parts. Able to pretend, able to slip humanity on as a disguise when the mission warrants it, but above all, not a person. All those gears of family and the cogs of choice and will had been smashed up, warped, at some point he doesn’t remember.

Some point in the 40s, he thinks, when he allows himself to think it. That’s when things become clear, the 40s. Late 40s. Whatever happened then, whatever broke him, it left him irreparable. Irredeemable.

The General has done what he can to make something useful of what was left, has stripped out the broken pieces and taught him how to carry on without them. And the General is an excellent craftsman, has done good work. Has polished up that facade of humanity without cursing him with the truth of it. It’s no small act of mercy, that, but the greatest of kindnesses.

The Soldier knows he is an empty shell on a sandy fucking beach, a spent casing tumbling down a fire escape while the target crumples to the pavement below. He knows that his body is a human mask over inhuman non-substance, a veneer of solid ground over a vast ocean of nothing. He looks like a person, is shaped like a person, occasionally suffers from malfunctions that resemble what a person might experience, but he cannot and should not claim actual personhood when he lacks the qualifications.

He has learned to be content standing guard over people, outside the fire’s light, looking in. And that is what this is. That is why he is here. That is his role, not _in_ this family, not as _part_ of this family, but as an attachment to this family, a tangential protector, perhaps. A tool to be used to ensure the safety of this family’s members, and of the country at large, under the General’s command.

This unofficial mission is still a mission for all that it is a personal favor, is still a function of codename Winter Soldier, still a task, not a welcome. He can’t let it blur lines or tempt him into treating boundaries as ephemeral distinctions that don’t apply to him. They absolutely apply, and they have teeth. This cozy little home, this family, even the little mouse—they aren’t his. He doesn’t have these things, doesn’t have _any_ things, other than perhaps his chair. His prep room, in all its variations across the continent. _That_ is his, _this_ is not.

_She’s still his little mouse, though._

It might not be right, thinking of her as _his_ little mouse, might not be proper, might not be permitted in the strictest of senses. But that’s a bit of defiant possessiveness he will indulge himself in. The General is a master craftsman, but he’s not perfect. He knows that there are still some flaws in him that the General can’t buff out. This is definitely one of them. She’s his little mouse. He’ll fight anyone who tries to take her from him, tries to pull her out of his memories, carve her out, erase her.

He’s lost a lot, back when he was broken, and there are the vultures of _that_ team circling who want to take more, but he will _not_ lose his little mouse. He won’t. He can’t. She’s precious and she clung to him, and _he_ will cling to _her_ if he has to. See if he won’t.

The General will see. The General sees everything, hears everything, knows everything. Reads every report written on his functions and malfunctions. The General has nodded his permission. The General is watching him, waiting to see what he does.

He would go to the room where his little mouse sleeps, would slink past her ignorable father and her perpetually terrified mother, would settle her into her bed, and maybe tuck her blankets snugly around her, but he’s frozen on the spot, mind racing, because her perpetually terrified mother is _looking at him._

It _is_ a first. She looks at him, and it has never happened before. He _knows_ it’s a first. If she had ever looked at him like this before, he would remember it.

She looks at him—directly at him—looks at her daughter in his arms, and she is as terrified as ever. Her whole body trembles in fear, not just hands, fingers, lips. Her eyes shine with her fear, and her fingers make little twitching gestures as though searching for something to defend herself with.

Or… No. He’s _wrong_.

She’s not unconsciously searching for a shield to hide behind, to protect herself with. She’s steeling herself up for the bold move of taking her daughter from him. She is gathering nerves, mustering reserves of courage and daring, compiling all her untrained might to tackle him— _him_ —if that’s what it takes to have her daughter in her own arms, safe and sound.

Oh, she’s as terrified as ever, but that’s not going to stop her from challenging him in defense of her baby.

She has, it seems, finally found a reason to climb up over the top of her fear, to scramble over the ridge and put one shaking foot over the edge into the unknown. To stand on the other side, facing the darkness. To look at him, the object of her terror, so that her panic isn’t blind, so that she can see her daughter with her own eyes and confirm that she is safe, whole, returned in truth and not merely for burial.

His—her— _their_ little mouse is her courage. Their little mouse is the hill she is gearing up to die on, and it’s so, so pointless. He is no threat here. Not to her, and certainly not to her daughter. Never to her daughter. But now that she has climbed up over her fear, now that she is fixing her eyes on a battle that does not need to be fought and that she cannot win, she is resolute, is stubborn, is determination given human form.

 _This_ is where his little mouse gets her fierceness. This woman. Her mother. He knows that now. He’d never have had cause to suspect before now— _could_ never have suspected—that this woman was the source for that. Her inner strength even in the shadow of her terror is bright, unflickering. Is sunlight coming out from behind a decade of cloudy gloom. Not some weak match struck in a time of need, a flash and gone in the time it takes to light the candle. She is no timidly dancing candle, either. She is a _sun_.

He will have to come up with a new designation for her.

She can never be the perpetually terrified anything now that he knows her true shape. How the hell did she keep that hidden from him?

Since she grants him this gift of seeing her, actually _seeing_ her, he gives her a nod in return, watches her hold her gathered courage in her arms and wait him out instead of making her doomed-to-fail move. He won’t speak—won’t take the risk that his voice could call the clouds back to bury her in doubt—but she deserves the respect of a nod, of acknowledgement, of there-you-are. Deserves it absolutely and without question. She is…

She is the mother mouse with the hidden fire. She gave his little mouse her shape.

The mother mouse with the hidden fire moves out of his way as he steps crabwise around her, two bodies warily circling an invisible point between them, keeping an exact distance as they trade positions to pass one another. She is no longer intending to take his little mouse, but is content to keep her eyes trained on him, and on her daughter, to reassure herself that the little girl in his arms is real, is breathing, is well enough to sleep soundly.

Is home.

Is safe.

She follows him past the little kitchen, past the short hallway, keeping her distance still, but keeping watch all the same, as he goes to the room he knows to be his little mouse’s bedroom, meant in the floor plans to be a storage room, but still a large enough space to fit her bed, a little table, a little chair. Her school things and clothes.

It takes time to have one’s apartment upgraded with the addition of a new family member, and there is only the one little mouse, after all. If she had a sibling, the family would already have been moved into a larger apartment. Maybe her bedroom would have a window, then. She should have a window, something to let light in. She should not be closed away in the dark. She’s too precious for that. There will be enough dark times ahead of her that she should have the light while she can.

Nothing he can do about that, though.

What he _can_ do is allow her mother with the hidden fire to see his back, to be at his six, to be in a position to strike at him if she feels the need to do so. What he can do is reach out to pull the covers back on his little mouse’s bed, to prod the pillow into its softest configuration. She’s slept on a terrible sofa, and slumped against a car door, and carried about in his arms, but her bed should cradle her, should surround her in a cloud of familiarity and warmth. He won’t allow her pillow to be less than perfect.

What he can do is gently rearrange his little mouse in his arms until he can support her sitting on her bed not even half awake as he snugs her winter coat down off her arms to be put aside, as he slips her shoes off one by one and lets them drop softly to the floor by her bed. She can sleep in her tights and dress, but not her coat. Not her shoes. These things should be put away, should be neat and tidy, should be organized so they are easily found later.

What he can do is help her sleepily lie back in her bed, pull the covers back up under her chin, and bend over her, and press a kiss to her hair, and wish her safe sleep. It will not be the last time he sees her, will not be the last time he remembers her, will not be the end of what he can do for her. She is a gift in his eyes, everything about her tender, precious self, every aspect of her being, all of her, inside and out. And gifts should be returned. He will give her the tools she needs to survive the world she lives in, to survive it whole, intact, true to herself.

What he can do is stand back when the mother mouse with the hidden fire takes his place at their little mouse’s bedside and unleashes a tidal wave of thanks on him, drowning him with unearned gratitude she does not know better than to heap upon him.

What he can do is stand and nod at her, silently thanking her in return for giving his little mouse her shape, and for keeping her terrified clouds back, keeping them to herself, so that their little mouse, his and hers and the General’s, can be the sort of mouse she is, and—please, _please_ —will always be.

He can do that.


	12. Soldat: The fucking goddamn train

**—A Moscow train station: Sunday morning, pre-dawn, 22 November 1970—**

It has been a nice drive. A relaxing drive. A drive without any of the mounting tension he’d have expected, given where they are going and what they will be doing when they get there.

The General is not like the junior handlers from before, after all. The General is content to sit in the backseat of a government car, directly beside him, without a duffel filled with lavender-smelling clothes and a child’s coat to serve as a barrier. Without a rifle across his lap. Without even a pistol. The General needs no weapons to defend himself from the Soldier, and he knows it. The Soldier _is_ all the weapon he needs.

The government driver of the car is likewise calm. That’s because he knows who the General is, but doesn’t know what the Soldier is. If he knew what was in the backseat of his car, he would have white knuckles on the steering wheel, and his fear would be wearing away at the banked up calm generated by his little mouse’s trust, and the General’s trust, and the mother mouse’s… trust, which is still so foreign a thing, and so precious a thing for its rarity.

So yes, they are going where they are going, and when they get there, they will be doing what they will be doing. But for now, it has been a nice, calming, relaxing drive through the poorly lit icy streets of midnight-Moscow.

It’s possible the General had planned it this way, had known that there was a need for such an interlude before they arrived. The Soldier wouldn’t doubt that—the General knows him better than he knows himself, knows him inside and out, knows how to handle him perfectly for the perfect results.

And it has been a pleasant drive.

Now that they’re at the actual train station, though, his body doesn’t want to cooperate anymore. He doesn’t want to get out of this car, doesn’t want to walk up to that platform, doesn’t want to climb those steps, doesn’t want to deliver himself into the belly of a fucking goddamn train. For nineteen fucking goddamn hours. Trapped in a fucking goddamn train.

It’s like he ate a whole pot full of that wretched _kasha_ and a dozen chocolates on top of that. But there’s nothing inside to bring up except dread. And dread doesn’t have a physical presence, anyway. It just feels like a physical presence, sitting in the pit of his gut, hot and heavy and wrong.

He doesn’t want to do a single thing that would put him closer to being on that train, but the car door opens, and he gets himself out of the back without hesitation. He won’t hesitate in front of the General, won’t dig his heels in, won’t make the General’s life difficult. Not when he has the option of getting to his feet and then turning, reaching back into the car to help the General out, instead.

When there’s a choice between being a hindrance to the General and offering assistance to the General, there really isn’t a choice at all. Or not one he has to bother making, anyway. It’s already made for him, deep inside every fiber of his being, and the default is always to please the General. The man has given him everything he has, and while he doesn’t have much, he owes what he does have to the General and his boundless patience and attention to detail.

He is the General’s Soldier, not some petulant child to throw a sulky tantrum. The General is bringing him back to the Perm base on a train, and so he is getting on that train.

The fucking goddamn train.

“Mission report, Soldier.” The General, under his breath.

He comes back to himself, finds himself staring at a train platform, unmoving, awards himself an internal snarl of self-disgust. He is better than this. He takes in a breath, gathers his thoughts, and prepares to start at the beginning, with the junior cowards-he-means-handlers on the helicopter and the fact that they were better armed than he was, but the General continues.

“Tell me about the initial drop point. The suit factory.”

Alright. That’s a different place to start. And a difficult place to start, given the number of civilians within earshot and the sensitive subject matter of that portion of his report. He opts to accompany his report with a tangible, with something the General can hold, something he can be looking down at so that no one can read his lips easily if he wants to ask for clarification on any given point.

The Soldier slips his fingers inside the borrowed coat and into one of the many pouches that riddle his tac gear and that could have held a grenade, and withdraws the papers from the factory—Blond bro’s second and undelivered ransom note, written on the good stationery, swiped from his coat pocket along with the car keys. He’d folded that up along with his own notes on the good stationery, about addresses, license plates and fucking chickens.

The train platform is darkly lit enough that the smudges of dried blood won’t draw too much attention. And the General accepts the folded up bundle of blood-smeared stationery without hesitation or grimace, nothing to draw attention to them.

“They’ve seen better days,” the Soldier murmurs, “but the number of projects still on the machines says that they have enough work coming in to sustain the business without government assistance.” He looks over at the General, watches him read through the notes. “The building needs repairs, and now a deep cleaning on the upper levels, but shouldn’t collapse in the next handful of years.”

The General gestures toward one of the phones to the side of the boarding platform, and the Soldier clears a path for him, simply by heading there himself and being intimidatingly large in the coat he is wearing over his tac gear. His place then is to scan for eavesdroppers, to stand with his back to the General while the call is placed, to confirm that no one approaches. It’s a concrete task, and one that does not include stepping onto a train, and he is happy to comply.

It is both fortunate and unfortunate that the General is so efficient in his direction of troops. The second ransom site won’t be populated, since by now the remaining members of the idiot brotherhood will have checked in and found, well, _not_ a freestanding chicken dacha full of bros and a hostage. But it’s a connecting point to trace, another node in the webwork that will lead the General to his prey. It’s fortunate that the General is able to rouse two agents from the Moscow base to join the hunt now that the little mouse is safe.

It’s supremely unfortunate, however, that the call lasts for mere minutes and then nothing stands between him and the train his mind is anxiously twisting away from.

“You did well to allow him to write his note, Soldier,” the General murmurs, still looking slightly downward, face tilted into the notes to hide the movements of his lips as he leads them back toward the train itself, with its open door gaping wide to swallow them. “And your handwriting has improved.”

It’s praise that he has earned, and that does help as he follows the General to the train, to the steps leading up to the door, leading into the train itself. He doesn’t want to get on the train. He doesn’t, he _doesn’t_ —there are other ways to get to Perm.

He doesn’t remember working to improve his handwriting, but then, he doesn’t always remember the things he’s tasked with to occupy his time between missions when he’s not in the cold. It’s not an unusual gap, and the warmth of approved-well-done fills the gap in any case. The General hasn’t commented on his handwriting for what feels like years. But he has improved. The General said so.

The job-well-done glow of it even gets him up the steps and into the fucking goddamn train without an external twitch.

 

* * *

 

**—Train from Moscow to Perm: Sunday morning, pre-dawn, 22 November 1970—**

“…stockpile of weapons in the attic didn’t contain any explosives to use on the chicken dacha. So I set it on fire, instead.” The General’s eyebrow inching up on his forehead is a signal to stop, so the Soldier pauses in his report.

For some unknown reason, the General has broken this mission report up into many pieces. Usually the General takes his report in a single string of facts, asks clarifying questions when he feels the need to do so—when the Soldier is being unclear; it’s never a fault of understanding on the General’s part, but an error on the Soldier’s—and then provides feedback, instruction, critique. This time…

Beyond starting not-at-the-beginning, the General has asked him for his report in unordered pieces, taking him to the factory, and then to the road conditions on the drive back to Moscow, and then the exact state he found the little mouse in, and then what he’d done with her captors, and then how the junior handlers had fared on the helicopter, and then how he had left the dacha…

It’s a challenge to follow the pieces across the board of his mind, but that is the order the General wishes to discuss things in, and so that is what they will do. He isn’t sure _why_ the General is making the report so much harder to give, but… He is undeniably glad that the General does so. It gives him something to focus hard enough on that his mind doesn’t have to acknowledge the train currently surrounding him.

Of course, this pause in the reporting gives his surroundings a chance to filter back in.

There is just something about the sound of the wheels on the tracks, something about the sway of the carriage, something about the way he can feel the ground underneath his feet moving too fast and too close, something about the way the walls of the compartment close in like a coffin, worse than the cryochamber, worse than the little metal box they sometimes put him in to correct a behavioral malfunction… There’s just something horrible about _trains_ that creeps along his spine and coils itself around his heart and squeezes.

He wishes the General would say what it is he has to say about his setting fire to the chicken dacha. He doesn’t typically exhibit impatience, and would never do so in relation to the General, especially not when the General has the option of leaving him to his silence and the unidentified, illogical horrors his mind is itching to toss in his face while he sits trapped in a moving train.

Impatience is not an option, though he can feel it digging in and presenting itself as a false option. It will be horrible if he lets that slip out. But he can’t let that slip out; it’s not an option. He will wait patiently, not fidget impatiently, for the General to… perhaps voice an objection to the message sent on his behalf? Perhaps reprimand him for it? He would set the chicken dacha on fire again, even if it did earn a reprimand.

It had a _chicken_ on top of it. It _had_ to go.

“You’re saying you set the ‘chicken dacha’ on fire with Maria still inside?” the General asks, tone dry, so dry. Amusement and potential for correction, rolled into one.

It’s an interesting question, and not the actual question, he’s sure of that. The General knows that she has been returned safely, so it’s not a question designed to see if she was harmed by his actions—the General knows, surely, that he would never hurt his little mouse.

The General continues. “Or did you leave her shivering in the car while you indulged your irritation?”

Oh. That’s the question. Did his message come at the expense of her comfort, was it a _selfish_ message, and therefore, the _actual_ question: Do you think you have a self? Do I need to teach you again? Have you forgotten so much, failed so dismally? Do I have cause to be disappointed in you?

The General does not need to teach that lesson again. He’s learned it well. He will do anything, or near enough, not be a disappointment to the General. He would like to think that he has at least done well enough not to be a disappointment tonight. He is on a train, after all, a fucking goddamn train, and has not devolved into a pile of twitching panic. Externally. He can say no such thing about his insides.

“Still inside,” he says. “Sleeping on the sofa.” He looks around for something not-the-General to rest his eyes on, just to escape for a moment from the fear of disappointing him, but gives that up quickly. The insides of trains are never a comfort, and the chittering queasy static in the back of his head jumps to a louder level without the General as a focal point, even if there is a possibility of seeing disappointment in the General’s eyes. He looks back at the General like a drowning man clutching a lifeline, and it’s not so far from the truth of the situation.

“I used one of the logs as a torch and set the curtains and walls up,” he continues, “and the bedding, the kitchen table, several chairs, one of the upstairs wardrobes—the one with the guns, not the one with the drugs. It will burn well, even with the snow on the ground.”

The General seems to want more. He’s not sure what more there is to add on that note. He’s left nothing out in his list of torched items.

He didn’t turn the gas on first, since that would have been dangerous for fire-suppression teams coming to save the area, and it wasn’t their fault the fuckers in that dacha had put a metal chicken on top.

He didn’t torch the shed or the outhouse, because that might have brought the whole neighborhood down from proximity. Even though they suffered from a chicken fetish, they must have been _suffering_ from it, and didn’t deserve the additional loss.

He wonders, suddenly, if that rural collective had been a gathering place for summertime _dachniki_ chicken farmers. There doesn’t seem to be much black market potential in poultry, but he is only an expert in detesting metal chickens, not in farming flesh-and-feathers chickens. It does seem conceivable for there to be some sort of criminal chicken empire. Everything else in the world has a seedy underbelly. Why not chicken farming?

It would provide a reason for the presence of a chicken dacha filled with garbage mafiosos and used by those mafiosos as a safehouse, and also a reason for the alarming number of metal chickens in the area. A reason beyond aesthetics, obviously, because there was nothing aesthetically pleasing about metal chicken roof-toppers.

None of that seems like something the General is looking for, though. He’s more likely to earn an additional reprimand—not the worst thing possible on a train—than to please the General with that line of thinking.

So, what more _does_ he want? The Soldier doesn’t shift on the bench seating—to shift uncomfortably is not within report protocols. “The chicken dacha is probably mostly fallen beams and cinders at this point,” he adds. “With a burnt metal chicken in there somewhere.” It’s worth a shot. Might be what the General wants. He hates being unsure almost as much as he hates being on this train.

This fucking _goddamn_ train.

There’s an assessing silence from across the compartment, the General making decisions and weighing alternatives. The little mouse had never been in any danger—he would not set a fire that could catch her little paws, not ever, and especially not after the agitation of wondering about what her captors might have done to her paws and the rest of her.

He knows the General knows that, is reasonably certain that the reprimand he has coming is about the challenge he’d presented while reporting over the phone—the “does she have to” he had dared to ask—and not about a little side arson. The General wouldn’t muddy the waters by issuing correction over the wrong thing. The correction will come for what needs to be corrected, not for accepting the offer of an outlet.

Perhaps the General is satisfied with the contents and level of detail in the report and is merely calculating the proper timing of his reprimand. They both know it’s coming. If it’s verbal, it can happen on this train. It’s nineteen hours to Perm. That’s a long time for a reprimand to stew. Maybe that’s something he can focus on, too. To take his mind off the train itself. He is patient—he’ll wait for it. It’ll be a nice distraction. The General is kind to make him wait for that.

“So there are two remaining members of this little cadre of fools,” the General finally says, gesturing with the bloodstained papers.

A new direction. The Soldier leaps at it, claws at it with both hands. Tries not to be outwardly desperate, though he is sure he fails. The General can see right through him. “Yes, General, at least two. The man at the factory said three to five at the chicken dacha, depending. There were three. At least two remain unaccounted for, probably more.”

Maybe the General will order the train stopped, will order the Soldier off of the train, will command him to hunt down the rest and end them. He will do it, if he’s ordered to. He will do it if he’s asked to. He will do it if it is presented as a possible option for him to choose. It would get him off this train.

But the General has already called in the second ransom drop to be investigated by others, locals, and he knows more about the woman who took the little mouse away from her school than the Soldier does. If the traitor woman was properly vetted before this, then the mafiosos had something they were holding over her. Otherwise, she’s one of them. He wonders if they call her “bro” or “sis.”

Either way, the General has likely already had her located, had someone dig her up out of whatever crack she was hiding in. He’s had someone ensure that she’s safe from further blackmail, or that she’s been made sufficiently sorry for what she’s done.

Possibly both—it’s hard to blackmail a corpse.

“Your assessment, then,” the General says, leaning back into the corner of the bench.

The Soldier straightens, his mind abandoning chickens of every sort to cling instead to the General’s words, his pending request. The General’s questions are calming, his voice is soothing, reasonable, more reasonable than the roiling, chittering, wordless dread stalking him from the darkest places in his mind, filling him up like static and screaming, falling on him like a torrential storm where every droplet of the deluge is a twitching, leggy spider or a jittery black cockroach in the dark.

Anything is better than being on a moving train with nothing to distract him from the fact that _he is on a moving train_. And among the myriad better things, the General is his preference by far. The General is a safe place to fix his attention.

“How likely do you think it is that there will be a second attempt—not just on Maria, but on any part of my family?” He seems to have more to say, something to add to the query, to narrow it, shape it, provide the structure needed to ensure a proper response. The General doesn’t set traps for him, and the Soldier is not disappointed, as the General continues a minute later. “Since this was, as you speculate, incidental to any political motivations.” He scowls. “Random, even.”

The General seems offended that random acts of violence present a threat to his family, that there wasn’t something beyond a mistaken assumption that Dmitri Ivanovich, minor politician and budding diplomat, could and would pay a ransom to have his daughter returned. It makes sense. When one has connections that both deter and invite retaliation for certain Soldier-delivered messages, it’s insulting to be blindsided by some mundane banality like gang violence.

But given that it was gang violence, was the act of a misinformed mafia… and given the sort of tit-for-tat, return-to-sender behavior mafias worldwide are known for… _would_ there be a repeat attempt on the little mouse? Or a fresh attempt, perhaps on the mother mouse with all her hidden fire? Or even a retaliation via assassination attempt on… on any of the General’s sons, their wives, children? The General himself? His wife?

Was the idiot arm of the bratva cleared by, supported by, instructed by the main mafia in Moscow, or were they an unofficial splinter? Was their action ordained and condoned? A bit of rebellious foolishness? An effort to escape their loyalties and therefore an invitation to internal retaliation?

It’s a good question, really. The sort of question it isn’t his place to ponder unless prompted to do so. There are at least two of the bratva left, at least two of their little bro-obsessed moron clan. Someone wiser would see the mess the Soldier left at drop point one, the ashes and remnants of their comrades in the chicken dacha. Would see that and do better research on the younger politician. Research that would point to the General, would indicate the suicidal nature of daring to cross the man.

But are they wiser?

“I left a message behind, General, not just a mess.” It nudges up against the thin line between over-enthusiastic compliance (permissible, if sometimes cautioned against afterward) and striking off on his own (strictly against operating procedures and always countered with appropriate use of force). He was cleared to take out any pent up aggression on the men in that dacha, but he was not cleared to speak—however metaphorically—on behalf of the General.

The General doesn’t pass judgment, so he continues. So far, at least, he’s obviously on the correct side of that line. “Even someone very stupid would see what was left over after I passed through, and would bow out. They are only a small branch of the main mafia, however many of them are left. They’ll find another way to America that avoids your family, or they’ll apologetically melt back into the larger mafia and hope they are welcomed without censure.”

He frowns, then continues. “The larger threat might be the Moscow mafia itself, if they see this as directed at their organization.”

The General nods, waves aside the last assessment. “I have people looking into the situation in Moscow. It may be that we call on you to make a few points clear to them, if they step into our business again.” The General pulls down the bit of paneling at the side of the train carriage designed to provide a table for a beverage, a meal, a bit of paperwork.

“That will do, Soldier,” he says as he opens the case with his writing implements and files.

What the Soldier says is, “Understood.” This mission report has jumped from point to point like a baffled rabbit, but the contents have all been delivered. Everything of value has been handed over.

What he does _not_ say is… “Please.” _Please_ let him continue reporting. He will find something to report. Anything to report. He will mentally return to the factory and count up each wilting cyclamen leaf, every desiccated long bean pod left on the poles out at the chicken dacha, will report the numbers. Will provide a complete inventory of the bratva’s weapons cache, will describe the drug packages and what he suspects their contents to have been.

Or the reprimand. It can be time for the reprimand.

Even if it is supposed to be something purely physical without a verbal component. Even if it is the tiny box and his stormcloud thoughts in the dark for unending hours, even if it’s the Lieutenant and a stun baton until he vomits blood… even then, even if there isn’t supposed to be a single verbal condemnation to accompany it, he’ll accept one. An extra reprimand, full of well-earned insults and words to make him sob inside—he’ll listen, he’ll absorb them, just _please_.

Please let him latch onto something that is not his surroundings.

Save him from the train.

“You are not to forget Maria, Soldier.” The General shifts in his seat, arranging his files to begin transcribing the salient parts of his report. “See that you don’t. Spend the next few hours fixing her in your mind.”

The Soldier’s thoughts pivot toward the new instruction, dropping the mystery of the reprimand, tossing aside the fucking goddamn train and bringing up his little mouse, her golden waves, her tiny fingers, her soft breathing as she slept. She is easy to call to his mind, and the General has told him to do it, issued an order, demanded compliance under the guise of a simple request. After all, there can be no call and response in a civilian setting.

“Yes, General,” he says softly, leaning back into the seat and closing his eyes. It is both easier and harder to block out the train—the fucking goddamn train—with his eyes closed. The vibration is worse, and the sounds, but there is the mental image of his little mouse to focus on instead, and he can keep his ears trained not on the clack-clack of the train’s wheels, but on the sounds of civilians in other compartments, the sounds of the General’s pen moving across shitty military stationery—

He should, perhaps, have swiped that stack of stationery out of the secretary’s desk for the General to have. It was excellent stationery. He can still feel how soft it was under his metal fingers, the tooth of the paper perfect for taking ink and neither smudging nor bleeding. Hot press, almost certainly, though he supposes someone could have taken the time to buff out the texture from a ream of cold press. Why bother, though, when hot press would get the job done right the first time?

Perhaps his little mouse would like to have some stationery to write on. Maybe, to draw on? For that she would need cold press, to do it right, for the charcoal not to smear, for watercolor to take well. Perhaps his little mouse would like to make sketches of what she sees, or to imagine whole new worlds and bring them to life. He can see little fingers holding a pencil, a bit of charcoal, a chalky nubbin of pastel, a brush heavy with water and pigment.

They aren’t her fingers, aren’t the little mouse’s, but they are small like hers. Young. But with the knuckles scuffed. The little minnow hasn’t taken up artwork that he knows of. Who has, then? Better that he doesn’t spend too much time trying to find out. If it doesn’t come to him, it’s not for him to know.

“Do you think your granddaughter would like to learn to draw? Maybe on good paper, like the stationery from the factory?”

“Perhaps.” The General looks up from his writing, is… Uneasy? Is maybe a little uneasy about something. What? There is nothing threatening about drawing, sketching. The little mouse wouldn’t find herself in a political mess for whatever childish sketches she could make at this point. And there’s time to teach her not to be obvious about any future political dissidence.

The General’s words are slow, like he’s testing something. “And that _is_ good stationery, yes.” The General pauses. “Interesting that it found its way to a rundown suit manufacturer’s personnel office.”

 _Bribery or theft_ , the Soldier thinks but does not say. _Everything good in this country comes from bribery or theft._ “Your wife has a pile of unlined stationery at the dacha. Next to her letter opener.” And this is not a safe line of thought, but the General’s wife is not here to object to it, and he can trust the General not to stab him with his pen. So… “If she could spare some, then your granddaughter might have a chance to try it out, before there was a need to purchase any supplies.”

The General chuckles, softly, under his breath, only partly amused, but no longer uneasy. Still assessing something, though. Still picking apart the intangibles and making decisions. He didn’t get this far in life without always thinking several steps ahead. “So you _do_ remember her letter opener. I wasn’t sure you would. Verochka will be pleased to know this.”

Well, if it pleases her. He’s not sure which part of that will be so very pleasing to the General’s wife, and isn’t sure it matters in any case. He’s never been sure what that woman sees when she looks at him. Nothing good, certainly.

“I’ll have some drawing paper sent to Moscow, Soldier,” the General says, still testing waters the Soldier can’t even see. “Let’s see what Maria makes of it.”


	13. Soldat: To get beyond the mountain

**—Train from Moscow to Perm: Sunday mid-morning, 22 November 1970—**

He has been hunched into his corner of this train compartment for what he thinks is three hours, pressing the Arm as tightly as he can manage to the side wall without damaging the wall so that the pressure is a distraction from the fact of the train. The side wall sends back firmness, sends I-will-not-break, sends you-are-contained—and all of that is better than nothing and worse than everything. He is trapped, but trapped… soundly.

He has spent what is possibly three hours straining his ears to catch the scratch of the General’s pen endlessly moving across shitty stationery, the occasional movement of civilians along the corridor outside the compartment, all of them unfazed by the fact that they are on board a train, even enjoying it, from the contented murmurs. The Soldier is impressed the General’s fingers haven’t cramped. He is less impressed by the civilians being oblivious to the misery that is all trains everywhere.

He has breathed steadily in and out, an external pretense of calm that in no way reflects his agitation, for approximately three hours, eyes tightly shut and mind firmly on the image of his little mouse, tucked tightly into her bed, safe in a way he isn’t, secure in a way he can never be on a fucking goddamn train, sleeping peacefully in a way he can’t honestly recall ever having done, himself.

The train sways sickeningly, rattles like so many clanking parts that will burst at the seams and send him spilling out of the compartment and into the empty nothing that waits for him beyond those walls. Inspecting the joint work on the train would not have provided him any relief, and could not have been done on a civilian train in any case. But he wishes there had been a chance to go over every single seam and connecting point, to test the stability of the walls against… he doesn’t even know what.

It has been three hours—he thinks; he hopes it hasn’t been less—since the General gave him a task, since he was promised the memory of his little mouse, was challenged to do the mental legwork necessary to make that promise come true, even after the wipes. It has only been three hours. And there were two hours prior, spent chasing randomly shifting subjects to deliver a complete—if disjointed—report. That is only five hours.

It’s only been five hours on this fucking goddamn train, and there are fourteen left, and he doesn’t know if he can do it.

It isn’t as though he has a choice in the matter, of course. And the General seems confident in his ability to hold strong against the looming mass of crawling horrors in his mind for the entire duration of the trip. The General can’t be wrong. Is never wrong. Knows him better than he knows himself. If the General thinks he can do this, it is a thing he will do.

It’s not the kind of confidence that warms him with well-done, though. It’s a strategic sort of confidence, the same sort that accompanies endurance testing between upgrades—how long can he run full out before he faceplants and cannot get back up again? how long can he scream in his chair under the halo before he can only silently jerk and spasm? how much liquid can his lungs hold before he cannot continue to dodge blows?

This train is, in its own way, a test of his endurance.

He is going to fail the test.

It will earn him another reprimand, in addition to the one that is coming for his challenge earlier. If the General is particularly disappointed in his behavior on this train, the reprimand for failing this test of his resolve will be a return trip to Moscow on the same fucking goddamn train, just to make him succeed despite himself. It’s the sort of thing that might look cruel from the outside, but the General means well, only means to show him that he can endure anything, even—especially—the things he is sure he cannot.

Anything the General thinks he can do, he will end up doing. Even if it takes a few tries. The General will see to it, will ensure his success by whatever means are necessary.

He calls up his mental image of his little mouse again. It’s part practice, carving in the pathways he’ll need to ensure that he can reach his impressions of her on command instead of waiting for her to trickle into being. But it’s also part need for something to stand between himself and the train, and that is not what he is supposed to be doing, who she is supposed to be to him. She is someone he is to protect and cherish, possibly someday obey unquestionably; not someone who should ever have cause to protect him.

But the General’s pen is still working its way across page after page of the papers in his case, amassing a full report to be typed later. Even unofficial missions required reports. Paperwork is, apparently, a given in all walks of life. He really should have stolen that stationery to make the General’s paperwork more pleasant. He wonders why the General’s wife keeps such nice stationery at the dacha when the General works on standard military issue.

Well, as with most things pertaining to the General’s wife, it’s not his business, and he moves on. Moves back to his little mouse, fiercely standing between him and this fucking goddamn train, an imagined presence in the carriage he must be strong for. Not at all how he supposed to be imagining her. The General would likely not be pleased if he knew.

The scratch of pen on paper reassures him that the General has his attention elsewhere, and won’t know that he’s bringing up the little mouse as a shield between himself and the train. Unless this is why has given the command. Did the General mean it, when he said that he could remember her? Or did he just want to get some paperwork sorted without wasting time carefully handling the Soldier, occupying him to avoid an outburst?

There is a small part of his mind that hesitantly points out the possibility that the prospect of remembering his little mouse is, in and of itself, a distraction and nothing more. The much bigger part of him knows, however, that the General doesn’t set traps for him, doesn’t offer a thing and then take it away again. Not if he’s meant to have it. And it’s logical that he should be meant to have the memories of the little mouse. Practical. Efficient.

The General prizes efficiency.

He imagines having to be reintroduced to her every summer, the hassle of that, the risks involved, the wasted time. Already, the General has seen to it that the little mouse will come back to him when he encounters her, to avoid exactly that hassle, that risk, that waste. It’s even more practical to shore up some connections so that she doesn’t have to come back, but is already there. It will make any future missions involving her much simpler.

The General is a practical man. Strategic. A proponent of efficiency. It is efficient for him to be able to retain his knowledge of the little mouse, and the General did say that he was to do so, and the General does not set traps for him.

He will remember her, and not just because she has formed a mountain range in the convection currents of his mind, solid and immovable except by means of… of _that_ team. With _their_ tools. They could do it. They could take her from him, still. There is nothing they cannot take from him. Except the General had said that they wouldn’t, said that he was to remember her.

The General is a source of truth. He will believe the General.

And he will continue to turn his little mouse over and over in his mind, repeating to himself every fact of her, every sense of her, all of her fierce determination and her kindness and her reckless curiosity. Her obliviousness with regard to consequences.

The little mouse in the apple tree, near tears for being stuck in the branches without a ladder, but not at all apologetic despite the clear and repeated demand that she not only stay off the ladder but also out of the orchard entirely. He took a wrench to the face for that, for the leaves in her hair. _Do better, Soldier._

The little mouse in the upper room of the dacha with a pile of cut up draperies in her lap, and her dolls all messily wrapped in lace like little mummies and burn victims, and her in the middle of them, with her little fingers still gripping her grandmother’s scissors without a hint of remorse. It had been the letter opener for that—the first time he’d been introduced to it, had watched the filigree fill with red. _See how you like it, Soldier._

The little mouse in the closet surrounded by filth and moth-eaten blankets, her face a map of livid bruising and her terror palpable, and does she _have_ to? Can’t _this_ be the worst she ever encounters? There has been no reprimand for this yet, but it is coming. The train itself might be the reprimand. _See how you like it, Soldier. Here, have some terror of your own._

The sound of pen on paper has ceased, but the Soldier keeps his eyes closed, the better to see his little mouse, the better to force his mind to put her in the champagne dress with the tiny butter daisies, her hair clean and brushed, her tights fresh white and unstained. He erases the bruise across her face as well, because he can in his mind even if he can’t in the world itself.

He puts her by the fire, sleeping soundly in the warmth, the light playing across her face as the flames dance about, her fingers curled loosely around the corner of a soft flannel blanket in pleasant dreams, and not clutching at leather tac gear in fear. This is how she belongs. This is what she is made for. This is his little mouse at peace, resting, protected.

It can’t last, and not just because the train is an intrusive monster encroaching inescapably on his mental landscape, already sending inky tendrils along the edges of his thoughts of her. No, it can’t last because she will grow up. And the world she lives in is one that houses an abundance of horrors, any of which could befall her when he is in the cold, or on a mission. Is unable to come to her aid.

This is why she needs to learn to defend herself. Why she needs to be taught more than the use of her teeth in a desperate close-quarters struggle.

He wonders if he’ll be permitted to teach her that, so that the General doesn’t have to be worried about her again, so that the mother mouse with the hidden fire doesn’t have to be afraid for her, so that no one will ever put another bruise on her face or teach her advanced lessons in pain and terror. It isn’t the sort of thing he can ask for, can seek out permission for before doing. But he would like it if no one got in his way.

Because he’s going to do it, either way, permitted or not.

Especially now that he is not going to forget her, won’t have to wait for her to reform in his mind before he can come once more to this conclusion. So much time wasted if he has to start over before he can begin showing her the tools for her self-defense, but now he will be able to skip that, will be able to start immediately.

Even so, he would prefer for it to be something he can do within the bounds of compliance. If it’s permitted, even in the sense of being merely overlooked the way his first lesson was, he will be able to pack more tools into his little mouse’s belt than if he’s reprimanded and removed from her presence. And that is the ultimate goal—protection for the little mouse even when he is not at her shoulder to perform that protection by hand.

Of course, there’s also the fact that a reprimand for instilling self-defensive violence in his little mouse—if it turns out not to be permitted—is going to be far worse than the one for merely questioning the General’s plans for her. And he doesn’t know yet just how bad the reprimand currently hanging over his head will end up being, though he knows it to be well-deserved.

Teaching his little mouse to protect herself does stand a fair chance of being permitted, at least where the General is concerned. He is certain her father will object, but he doesn’t give a single shit about that man’s opinion. Dmitri Ivanovich is the weakest of the General’s sons, the most pathetic, the least like his father. It’s the General’s opinion that matters, not the younger politician’s.

And the General knows that he taught her to bite. He hadn’t specifically _told_ the General, back whenever it had happened, but the General had seen his arm later at that dacha, and is a smart man. There hadn’t been a reprimand that he can remember, so he can only assume the General had approved however long ago. Had approved, or at least hadn’t issued correction.

Maybe he still approves. Maybe, if he had been on the fence about it, this latest incident has tipped him over into approval. A look over at the General seems like a safe option, to see if he can sense something in the General’s demeanor or expression that will give him a clue to the man’s thoughts.

The General hasn’t been writing anything for something like an hour while the Soldier has been restoring his little mouse to her fullness of self in his mind. He’s had a long day of it, and even though the sun’s up and the train is a fucking goddamn train, a military man of any sort is capable sleeping anywhere. The General is no exception—he might be sleeping. Might not be. Might be watching _him_. The General does that, sometimes. Watches him while thinking, planning, assessing. Still, it should be fine to glance.

The Soldier opens his eyes a crack, tries and fails to stifle a flinch at the visual reminder of the fucking goddamn train he’s trapped on, and cheats his eyes over toward the General, gauging the man’s response. Not asleep, though his eyes are closed and he leans into the corner. Resting, then. Resting, but keeping some of his attention trained on the Soldier, watching out for him. A passive protection.

The General’s care for him is reassuring. He hasn’t been abandoned to the train and his task of memorizing his little mouse. The General will register it if his agitation gets to be too much. Will maybe provide relief, a distraction, a puzzle to sort out, something to read. In the meantime, the General trusts him to comply with the unofficial order: remember my granddaughter.

And while the Soldier’s not just remembering her, while he’s going further than that and making his own plans for the little mouse’s future, he doesn’t feel guilty for it, doesn’t feel as though the General would fault him for the plans. Not when those plans should result in a young woman capable of taking any man apart who seeks to harm her.

Of course, that would be mere coincidence, taking a man apart. That is not the goal of his lesson plans for her, and would never be his little mouse’s goal, either. When one seeks to move beyond a mountain, to get to the other side of it, climbing the mountain is incidental. It has to be done in some cases, but in others, it’s just as effective to go around.

The purpose of self-defense is not to defeat an enemy, but to escape him in the pursuit of one’s own safety. To move beyond him, to thwart his attempts at harm. If the enemy dies in the process, that’s on him. So long as it is not the little mouse’s goal to harm her attackers, any damage those attackers suffer during her escape is their own fucking fault, and she will emerge blameless and pure, as precious after the incident as before it.

He won’t be teaching her violence for its own sake, or even violence for the sake of winning a fight or demonstrating prowess. He will merely be teaching her every single way to get beyond a mountain, even if that means blowing that mountain clear off the face of the planet and marching across the smoking remains.

Of course, she is only a child, is only a very little mouse. They will have to start small, like her, and build their way up to her full inner strength.

But size doesn’t mean shit when it comes to traversing mountains. A little mouse she may be, but she has the determination to cross whole mountain ranges if she is only given the tools with which to do it. And he knows his way around that toolbox, inside and out. Lives there, one might even say. 

He will see to it that she is properly equipped for whatever comes her way. 

If her father won’t permit her to keep a weapon, he will teach her how everything is a weapon waiting to be realized as such. If her grandmother wishes her to spend her time perfecting table manners and learning to be a lady, he will teach her how a lady can take care of herself with nothing but a purse strap, a hatpin, a pointy-toed shoe, a mascara brush, a tube of lipstick. 

And if she worries about being gentle, worries she might hurt someone, worries that her actions might end in someone’s injury or death, he will remind her that she is not seeking the top of the mountain, but the other side. It is not cruel to protect herself, not wrong to defend herself, not improper to do whatever she must to get herself to safety. There is no guilt involved if her motivations are pure.

He cannot take that bruise from her face and put it on his own, but he can and he will teach her the right motivations, teach her not to hesitate, teach her to do whatever it takes to get to the other side of that mountain.


	14. Soldat: Figments and fragments

**—Train from Moscow to Perm: Sunday, late evening, 22 November 1970—**

The knock at the compartment door is entirely expected. Hospitality carts—in addition to being the height of mocking hypocrisy on fucking goddamn trains—are noisy beasts even without the sounds of other passengers placing orders.

The General is, by now, asleep in truth, though he doesn’t look happily or peacefully so. The sun had set hours since, and the relief of it had perhaps been so obvious that the General no longer felt the need to coddle him by keeping part of himself awake and on call should the Soldier need handling.

The view outside the compartment window is no longer a snowy, icy hellscape full of invisible hands grabbing and plucking at him as the fucking goddamn train rushes by all clack-clack and rumbling, vibrating doom on metal wheels. Now it’s dark, just another patch of empty countryside, illuminated by stars above, the remnants of a moon halfway to setting. The black of the unknown outside the train is infinitely preferable to the blinding white of winter snows racing past him.

Of course, it’s still a fucking goddamn train he’s on, with all the attendant horrors to be expected. But he feels much more capable of managing the last stretch of this wretched journey now that it’s not accompanied by the visual impression of falling forward through a blur of white.

The General has not responded to the soft knock at the door, but the Soldier suspects he will want some tea later, and the train compartment is cold… Maybe there is a blanket he can obtain for the rest of the trip.

He pries himself out of the corner and sends the Arm through a quick calibration loop under the coat and tac sleeve—so strange having this many layers on top of the metal—before sliding the compartment door open enough to peer out.

“Feeling a little queasy, dear?” the woman with the cart chirps out, her face full of pity that says he fucked up the attempt to keep his expression neutral. Oh well. “Some ginger in your tea ought to clear that right up.”

As if he could drink ginger tea. As if that was even an option. As if it would work, if it _was_.

He reaches into a pocket and draws out a few banknotes, hands them over. “Tea, black, undiluted. Milk, jam, lemon. Leave the hot water and a second cup. And half a dozen _sushki_.” Those are the General’s favorites. He watches her assemble a tray with the items requested, takes special note of her wrists as she pours out portions and arranges cups and little pitchers. She doesn’t slip anything into the General’s tea, and everything has been poured or collected from communal stores.

“Also, a blanket until we reach Perm,” he says as he takes the tray from her and sets it on the little pull-down panel table.

She stops counting out his change and slides the banknotes into her little collection pouch to account for the addition of a blanket. “So chilly in the winter,” she agrees as she stoops down to pull a thin gray blanket from the bottom of her cart. It is not an ideal blanket, but it is an extra layer of warmth, and the woman with the cart is not wrong about the fucking goddamn train’s insulation.

The moment he has the blanket in hand, he slides the door shut on any further interaction, feels his shoulders untense slightly. Only slightly. He may be alone with the General again for all currently possible values of alone, but he’s still on this fucking goddamn train. He doesn’t even know how much longer this will last, has completely blanked on time that stretches endlessly out into the future. Maybe he will never leave the train. Maybe this is his reprimand, to be trapped on a moving train for all of time.

He chides himself for his foolishness. The General has things to do, places to be. Cannot spend his remaining time on a train to see to it that the Soldier endures his reprimand well. And the General would not issue a reprimand, a punishment of any sort, and then leave him to it. Part of the reprimand is that it is observed, noted, studied. The General would never turn and walk away, would never leave him to learn a lesson without guidance. The General would stay there, at his side, ensuring that the lesson is learned deeply and well.

Anything less would be irresponsible, would be unkind. And the General is as kind as he can afford to be. Too much kindness is bad for his conditioning.

There is a particularly vicious sway to the fucking goddamn train just then that reminds him that he is safer squeezed into the corner, with something solid bracketing him on both sides, keeping him pinned down so that the train can’t… can’t throw him out, somehow.

Though leaving this train would be a miracle of sorts, the thought of leaving it under power other than his own—of being _tossed_ out, of _falling_ out, of being _dragged_ out—is one that has him coming back to himself some time later with a panicked jerk of limbs. He takes a moment to put his breathing back in order—steady in, steady out, banish the wobbly catch of a moan in his throat before it can be voiced—and then unfolds the blanket with a shake to inspect it.

It’s truly not an excellent blanket. But it’s got no holes, and there are no needles or other foreign elements that could pose a threat. It’s another layer, and the General looks cold. The Soldier leans forward, around the tray with the tea things—no longer steaming, and that’s a bad sign for how long he spent stupidly staring in terror like a _fucking_ waste of space…

He shakes the thought from his head lest he repeat that behavior, and leans forward to drape the blanket over the General’s lap, where the thick winter coat doesn’t do enough to keep him warm. He tucks the ends in, gently, trying not to wake him, and then sits back on his own bench, leans into the corner, tries to get himself as tightly wedged into place as he can.

 _Fucking_ goddamn trains. Who even came up with the idea that anyone could or should travel like this? Sadists. Sadists invented trains.

It’s an hour before the General stirs in his sleep, lifts his head from the corner of the compartment and sits up. The General’s hand drops from where he’s had his arms folded over his chest, plucks casually at the blanket, just enough to verify what it is, not enough to move it. His eyes take in the tea on its tray, everything needed to make it to his preferences and an appropriate accompanying sweet bread as well.  

“You should have woken me, Soldier,” he says as he sits forward, reaches for the tray to assemble his tea. “Cold tea is disgusting.”

The Soldier looks at his knees for a moment before he can get his wounded frown tucked back out of sight. He has no right to feel hurt by the General’s words. “I’m sorry, General. I thought—” He shakes his head. “I thought you might prefer to sleep.”

He watches the General’s hands, certain he’s permitted that much regardless of his failure to ensure the General could have a properly hot cup of tea. A healthy amount of the concentrate, more than most like, into the second cup. A little water nearly to the top, no longer hot—the Soldier’s fault, that. He should have woken the General. The General said so. A splash of milk, a spoon of jam, the lemon wedge, not squeezed, just dropped in for a hint of sour.

The General sits back with his cup of tea, takes a sip, makes a disapproving noise in his throat. “It will have to do.” He looks out the window at the inky blurs of landscape rushing past, takes another sip. “And I suppose you are to be excused for not knowing any better than to let tea go cold.”

Except that he _does_ know better. He could have made exactly that cup of tea from watching the General prepare his tea for years now. He knows how to make tea—good tea, hot tea, with everything exactly right—has made it for the General before, even. He thinks. He’s definitely made tea for his little mouse, and for the General’s handler son. He just… thought, mistakenly, stupidly, that the General would prefer sleep over tea.

He shouldn’t have been so presumptuous, should have woken the General up to find out. Might even have failed in the act of purchasing the tea in the first place. Who was he to assume that the General would want tea? It wasn’t his place to make such a guess.

The General is kindly ignoring that, though, and is pretending that he doesn’t know how to make a good cup of tea, too. Is allowing the excuse to stand between them, offering him the out, holding out the option of ignorance they will both agree to agree upon instead of remarking that his actual understanding of tea signifies an error he should not have made.

He decides he will accept the offer, will remain silent instead of pointing out that even a child knows tea is better hot. It means that he is accepting a place of knowing less than a child about something as commonplace as tea, but it’s also less of a failure if he accepts that placement. He is so very, very tired of being a failure.

There are so many things he could have done better on this unofficial mission. So many areas where his actions were insufficient. And it’s not just the one unofficial mission, not even just his missions in general. There’s a prickle of you-failed-me in the back of his mind from a long time ago, too. People he should have been there for and wasn’t. People he left behind. People he…

People like the little girl with brown curls, who might be real, might not be real, could be a fragment of memory or a figment of his imagination. If she is real, she is someone he has failed. Someone who needed him at some point, might still need him, and he doesn’t even know who she is. Doesn’t even know if she’s real, and isn’t _that_ an insult to her, either way?

She had given him music back in the chicken dacha, though. Had given him words to sing to his little mouse, a tune to hum for her, a lullaby. Two lullabies, even. Gifts for his little mouse, sent through him. The girl with brown curls is, was, might be, might have been, a generous soul, to help him care for his little mouse, even though she can’t have known his little mouse at all. Even when his little mouse took him away from her, drew him back to the fire and sofa with her need.

The little mouse doesn’t need him now. Is safely at home with her mother with the hidden fire, her ineffectual father. She will need him again in the future, even if just so that he can teach her to be self-sufficient in a world steeped in violence, to defend herself. But there is no reason now, no reason at this moment, for him to turn away from the other little girl, the maybe-memory of the girl with brown curls.

Her hair through his fingers. Her forehead hot to the touch. Her eyes bright with both fever and delight as he reads her stories he doesn’t know from books he has never seen or held. Did she get better? Did she still need his help? Did she ever exist at all? Maybe he just cobbled her together from bits and pieces of other children, other little girls.

He’s encountered a number of them over the years, often through a scope: the innocent companions of targets, tangential marks, collateral. He tries to leave them alive, tries to fashion reasons for not adding them to the tally, tries to make it quick when he doesn’t have a choice. But none of them have ever featured any closer than that. He has not combed their hair, or done up their buttons, or sung them songs, or told them stories, or lifted them up giggling into the air.

So if he cobbled the girl with brown curls together out of others, where are the others? Who are the others? He is not capable of creating something like that out of whole cloth, surely. And he knows—really knows—so few children. The little mouse with her inner fierceness. The little minnow, so curious and eager. The little sparrow with the jet black hair and too much of her father in her to be safe to approach.

There are others, faint impressions, shapes too vague and shifting to put a designation to. The base children of Department X, seen at a distance while their parents go about their business, brought in for a week or a day or an afternoon. None of them clear enough to be recalled in anything so specific a set of details as the girl with those bouncing brown curls and the smiling lips that say… something. Make that sound. Call him that thing.

She’s there, maybe real and maybe not, a figment or a fragment, and so separate from everything else. So alone, in the dark jumble of holes and pits that make up what could very generously be called his memories.

“Was there ever a little girl with brown curls?”

The words slip out unprompted, perhaps an hour into this circuit of rambling thought, when the view out the window after the moon has set is as dark as the sprawling nothing that surrounds the impression of the girl with brown curls. The stars above don’t illuminate so much as emphasize how much nothing there is. A sea of emptiness where maybe there were memories, once. Maybe each star is a fragment of forgotten life, like the girl with brown curls, flickering in the black, impossibly far away from him and from each other, isolated and forever out of reach.

The General is still awake enough to stir, to sit upright, raise an eyebrow. Invitation to continue. Probably. The General has never scolded him for asking things like this, and for whatever reason, when the General is near, he doesn’t have the same sense of needing to avoid thinking this sort of thing. The empty places aren’t pleasant, but they don’t bite as hard when the General is near, a steady constant in his life, there until the end.

Still, his readings of the General are a little off today, no doubt because of the gibbering whispers in the corners of his mind about the meaning of every little vibration the train makes, every little noise, every queasy shift along the tracks. The meanings are all bad. Everything about being on a moving train is bad.

The silence stretches out between them as he debates whether that invitation to continue is what he thinks it is. He’s gotten it wrong before, so many times on this one fucking goddamn train alone, and what if he continues but the General was actually calling into question his daring to even speak?

The General’s eventual response, beyond his long, considering stare, is a staggering relief, for all that it’s simultaneously a demand that he defend his question. “Why do you ask?” the General finally replies, adjusting the blanket across his lap where it has slipped.

He’s not _sure_ why he asked, other than that he felt it was safe to do so, thought that the General would have an answer. He’s not sure that the General is actually asking him that question, either; the General might be asking him something more, underneath the obvious question. Might be asking him for elaboration instead of the simple reply of his own curiosity—that he has asked because he wants to know. Sometimes the General asks questions that are filled with deeper, unasked questions, nested inside like dolls.

He decides the General is looking for elaboration, decides to elaborate. “I think there might have been another little girl,” he says, shifting his eyes back out the window, to focus on the stars, on the solid black of the countryside rolling past, visible only in that there are no stars dotting its black mass. “She had brown hair. Curls. She was sick, and I sang to her.”

The General considers this, watches him without demanding his attention in return. Sometimes the General wants to watch him and not be observed while he does it. He’s good at knowing these times and looking elsewhere. He keeps his eyes on the stars, allows the General to study him.

“You are perhaps confusing Katya, who has black hair,” the General says. “You saw her several months ago. She spent a week on base with her father.”

He considers the statement, frowns, shakes his head. That is the little sparrow, whose eyes light up in glee when she is allowed to hold the stun baton for her father. She is nothing like the girl with brown curls. “No,” he murmurs. “Not Katya. It was brown hair. Curly.”

The General is in a good mood, to allow a conversation like this, allowing a _contradiction_ like this. That’s good. The General deserves to have good moods, to be relaxed and at ease. “She was coughing,” he continues, “and I sang to her. Read her stories? She was too weak to get out of bed.”

“Did you,” the General says, voice soft. “And what did you sing to her? This girl you think you know?”

“A lullaby.” He tries to pick it out from the depths of his mind, but the girl with the brown curls must have taken it back now that his little mouse doesn’t need it. It was never for him, anyway, but only ever for his little mouse. “I don’t know which one. I sang it to your granddaughter, too. At the chicken dacha. I’d forgotten until now.”

The General nods. “And did you know which one it was when you sang it?”

He didn’t. He had not known it then, and he sang it anyway, not really hearing the words. Or the tune. He shakes his head. “There were a lot of verses. I think I… I think some of them were made up. For the girl with brown curls.” That seems right, or close to right. Seems possible. “There weren’t enough verses, so I made up new ones. She… liked the tune so much, and I… didn’t want to… run out of song for her?”

He thinks he would have kept singing, even when the words ran out. He thinks he wouldn’t have repeated the same words, wouldn’t have started the song over. He’d have… She wanted stories, the girl with brown curls. Wanted him to tell her stories, read to her. He could… sing her stories. If he made up new verses to the song. Could make it _his_ song, made up just for her, for the little girl with brown curls.

“That’s very creative of you, Soldier.” The General’s voice, cutting through his thoughts and grounding him, giving him place, giving him purpose. “Very imaginative.”

Does the General mean making up story-songs? Crafting new verses to delight an audience of one? Or… or making up the little girl with brown curls? Both, he supposes, would be very creative of him, imaginative in ways he isn’t capable of being.

He looks from the stars to the General, even though he suspects the General would prefer for him to continue looking out the window. Which does the General mean? He turns his head, looks into the General’s eyes, searches for an answer in their depths, searches for the truth. The General knows everything there is to know about him, knows him better than he knows himself, always has. The General will know if the girl with brown curls is a fragment of a figment, will know if she is a lie he is telling himself, a comfort he has made up that he does not deserve.

The General shakes his head, sighs. It is halfway to an answer in and of itself, though he is at least only mildly annoyed and not fully disapproving. “There was never a little girl with brown hair, Soldier. Curls or otherwise.”

“Oh.” He feels his shoulders drop slightly, a flicker of disappointment that escapes before he can hide it, and looks out at the stars again, all the maybe-happened pricks of light surrounded by the vast, empty void. The General is right. He always is. He can trust the General more than he can trust himself, his faulty brain, his lacework timeline with all its holes, so delicately filled with emptiness and framed with fragile strands of recollection.

It would have been nice, he thinks, if she had been a fragment, something he’d had and lost but that could be reassembled, and not a figment. But it is also better that she is a figment, so that there is no little girl out there in the world, twirling a brown curl around a finger and wondering where he is. It still hurts, knowing that the little girl with her brown, brown curls, her laughter and her coughing both, her demands for story and song—

“You’ve gone too long without rest, Soldier. We’ll address that when we arrive in Perm, after the team finishes their testing.” The General reaches for his teacup of water, all that is left of the disappointing tea the Soldier had provided, and takes a drink. “They’re close, you know.”

The team. That’s right. The medical teams and their formulas. The testing. The pain-heat-bright and the carbonated feeling in his blood. Waiting for him to return to base, to hop up onto the table, lie back, allow the manacles to click shut, clamp down on the rubber to protect his teeth. He’d forgotten about that.

“Are they?” He wonders if he’s allowed to ask what they are close _to_. What they are trying to accomplish, which new drug they’re trying to develop. It’s hard to tell, since most of the drugs they work on have a very similar side effect of agony. Maybe he can ask about that. Sometimes he’s able to ask these things, and sometimes he isn’t.

The General is in a good mood. The General gave him the answer to the mystery of the little girl with brown curls: figment, not fragment. He decides to ask. “What’s their goal?”

“It’s inconvenient to strap down your limbs for every little surgery and upgrade,” the General says, tone light and unconcerned. “And ineffective, since any muscle relaxer that works on you long enough to be of use also works strongly enough to shut your heart down.”

He nods, ignores the queasy flicker of memory from that one October, the worst October. He’s overheard this before, overheard the mutters from surgical teams about the hassle of needing to unshackle a limb and reposition it. It’s not a garbage fact like the plate tectonics or the photons or the chakras, because it absolutely has a point and involves him directly.

He looks away from the stars, glances at the General and then studies the folds of the blanket across the General’s lap. It’s not the warmest blanket he’s laid eyes on, but it’s not threadbare, either. He thinks it might be doing a passable job of keeping the General warm. He wishes it was a much thicker blanket, all the same, so he could be certain the General would not catch a chill.

It would be too long a pause for anyone but the General, who always allows him to gather up his thoughts and spin them into words, for all that he snaps at the support teams to cut through their manic chatter. But with the General, he could silently gather his thoughts for minutes at a time and speak only when he’s ready. “They’re designing a better drug for that,” he finally says, answering his own question with the additional information the General has gifted to him. “So they won’t have to use the restraints.”

“Exactly.” The General sounds pleased, either with their goals, or with their progress, or with him for coming to the reasonable and logical conclusion and not balking when he says it. He’s… Glad the General is pleased, he supposes. That’s an acceptable reaction.

The General would not mind it, if he described how much the medical team’s formulas hurt, explained the sensations, the way dread settled on him like exactly the wrong sort of blanket, stifling and not comforting. He could list his experiences with as much detail as any other report, unpack each and every element of his suffering, every note and flavor that made up every minute of every test.

But it wouldn’t change anything, and after all, it _is_ a good idea, finding something that will keep him still and quiet. They’d had problems during the October upgrade, trying to put his body in the positions they needed to cleanly slice out ribs and then scapula while keeping him from helplessly thrashing away from their tools and shuddering with the pain, begging for a reprieve. It had hurt too much for him to comply, and though he’d done his best to be still for them, to be silent, he had failed, failed, failed.

He decides he will not mention it. The General has already given him answers to questions no one else would or could have answered, has already been patient with him, allowed conversation, invited discussion. It’s best not to test how far that will extend. Better to be grateful, better to demonstrate his gratitude with silence, better to avoid anything that might look like a complaint. He would not complain to the General, not about something as meaningless as his own pain.

The General consults his pocket watch. “We have another four hours until Perm, Soldier,” the General says. He gestures above, to the case he brought. “I want to sleep, and your Korean has been gathering dust. I won’t have your language skills becoming _rusted_.”

His head throbs, and he has to close his eyes for the space of a deep breath before he can chase the pain back inside where it doesn’t show. His pain is, as always, inconsequential, to be ignored in favor of obeying the unspoken command: get up, retrieve the language materials, begin work. He stands and gets down the case. Inside is a handful of books—among them, a book in Korean—a few vials of drugs, a package of nutrition tablets, a flask of water.

“The Korean, two tablets, and three swallows of water,” the General says. “Then put it back.”

He is ready to comply, and he does, chewing both tablets at once as he withdraws the book, and washing them down with the prescribed amount of water. It is an easy command, a simple task, requiring no thought, no contemplation, no interpretation. It is relaxing to obey an order like this one, a comfort, a place of stability in a tilting world. The General is kind to offer it to him, and he is grateful to accept what he is given.

He puts the case back on the luggage rack, reaches over to tuck the General’s blanket more snugly around his legs to keep any drafts out, so that he won’t get cold in his sleep. He would drape a second blanket around the General’s shoulders if there was a second to hand, but as it is, he has to settle for sitting again. He inspects the book. The title is familiar, even if the characters won’t coalesce into meaning.

The General was right. His Korean _is_ … His mind blanks on the word, refusing to go near it. No matter. He’s read this book in Mandarin and German, so he can fill in the gaps where his Korean fails him, polish his grammar and vocabulary, keep himself sharp.

The General always knows exactly how to maintain him.

 

* * *

  


**—KGB facility outside of Perm: Sunday, near midnight, 22 November 1970—**

They don’t even wait for him to get into the testing room before gathering around like white-coated vultures.

And really, there is no reason for them to. The mission he has just completed was an unofficial one, and he spent a solid nineteen hours on a fucking goddamn train during which he could report freely to the General about his activity on that mission and any outcomes. Once he was back in the General’s hands, he had not left them again, so there is no need for a debrief, no need for a delay before he can go back to the medical team.

The General said that he has not had enough rest, and that this will be corrected for after the medical team finishes. The sooner they get working, the sooner he can, maybe, go into the cold. He hates that, despises the cryochamber, but he is so, so tired. Or if there’s something else in the pipes, another mission coming up that makes the cold impractical, then maybe they will let him have a short and shallow maintenance wipe under the halo. Maybe they will let him drink some water, or at least hook him to the IVs and let him rehydrate that way.

First, though, there is work to be finished. The medical team mills about anxiously in their crisp white coats, waiting for the same signal he’s waiting for, for the General to pass the handoff notes to the team lead—four nutritional tablets, three spoonfuls of _kasha_ (rejected), a glass of water, another two tablets, three swallows of water; all things the team will need to know and to account for.

There go the notes. The General nods at him as the team lead scans the writing. Something is missing, but he can’t place what exactly it is. He still has his little mouse. He still knows her mother’s true shape. He survived the fucking goddamn train. He… Oh, that’s the missing bit. He is supposed to endure a reprimand for the challenge he issued to the General’s plan for his little mouse.

Maybe the train itself was the reprimand. Maybe _this_ is, being handed back over to the medical team for however many hours—days—of the cycle, the battery by the photons, the raging pulse of lava in his veins. No, medical testing is exactly that, nothing more and nothing less. And the General doesn’t have time to waste watching him on the table. The train must have been it. The train, or he’s still keeping it back, still waiting to reveal it. Maybe it will be waiting for him after the testing is complete.

Maybe he did well enough on the whole that the reprimand has been cancelled. That has happened before.

The Soldier keeps his eyes on the General, trying to determine whether he’s done his job well enough to avoid a reprimand or whether he’s already endured the reprimand and come out the other side, while gloved hands grab for the unnecessary coat and the assortment of buckles and straps that make up his tac gear underneath. Tac gear doesn’t belong in the room with the medical equipment. They will strip him out here, in the prep room. This is normal.

He recalls that he’d enjoyed putting his own tac gear on when heading out to retrieve his little mouse, but that’s alright. It’s well within protocol that he be stripped and changed and whatever else is needed. They aren’t in a hurry anymore, but there’s no reason to grant him any autonomy at this point.

The little mouse is back where she belongs, and, well, so is he.

For what that’s worth.


	15. The General: All good times should be remembered

_Hydi and hoodoo and toodeladdeloo_  
_A Merry Christmas season_  
_Is good for me and you._

— _Musevisa_ (“The Mouse Song”), chorus

 

* * *

 

**—KGB facility outside of Perm: Sunday, late evening, 22 November 1970—**

His Soldier disappears into the crowd of eager medical researchers, and the General feels the customary swell of pride in his Soldier’s utter lack of resistance. Not even an external sign of dismay at the prospect of resuming testing that would be accurately classed as torture except for the necessity of it.

Of course, it wouldn’t look like torture to an untrained observer—among his Soldier’s considerable repertoire of skills is making agony look mildly unpleasant, terror a bit of a fright, sorrow just a momentary passing disappointment. No, to know this drug trial for the torture it is, one has to first read through the preliminary reports and study the recorded stress response in his Soldier’s vitals.

Recorded vitals _can_ lie, when his Soldier means for them to. It’s another of his skills to force his breathing to remain steady, his heartbeat at baseline. It had already been in his repertoire as a marksman in the Great Patriotic War, and he’d retained it even after his messy fall in the Alps. That sort of thing takes presence of thought, though, and the medical records during Friday’s handoff had shown exactly how little of that his Soldier had left to work with during this rescue op. He’s honestly shocked his Soldier managed that wretched train with his reserves so low.

Still, it isn’t something he can afford to offer praise for. Let his Soldier think he has failed, and he will do better in the future. Tell his Soldier how well he’s done, and he’ll spiral into doubt about whether he’s earned the praise. It’s a fine line, praise. Too much of that is as sharp a switch as outright disapproval, and leaves a psychological welt every bit as deep.

It’s unfortunate, regrettable, that his Soldier be so scarred by the passage of time. As is the need for this current experimentation, and what will now have to come close on its heels. But regrets aren’t new. Working with his Soldier is an exercise in committing damnable moral offenses, and regrets abound. All of them necessary.

So he merely watches impassively as the researchers haul his Soldier off, leaving bits of tac gear in their wake for the regular prep crew to tidy up. As his Soldier obediently moves as directed. He will have to be proud for the both them, since his Soldier no longer has the stomach for self-esteem. Is instead highly trained in compliance.

Such compliance is not a guarantee, but very few things in life are. As far as reliable things go, though, his Soldier’s docile obedience—at least while a competent handler is in the area to potentially cast disapproval for any deviation—is generally a safely assumed given. There are very few things his Soldier will balk at when he is handled _properly_. Three, in fact, that he’s found so far. In the vast lineup of potentially objectionable situations, for there to be just three is nothing short of a miracle.

There’s Zola, of course, first if only out of chronological respect for the odious little man’s having been there first. Zola, and occasionally tangential traumas—trains, falling, a certain combination of spectacles and bow ties. It had taken a more direct hand than usual to steer his Soldier onto that train and then keep him there for that long. Still, he’d calmed himself down, or at least had the discipline to hold onto the distractions offered. Another thing he will carry pride for in his Soldier’s stead, will make note of in the lineup of his Soldier’s accomplishments.

Beyond Zola, the excavation team in all its forms gets resistance, naturally, though the halo and chair had lost their horror for his Soldier at some point in the early 50s. It’s unnerving, but his Soldier will gladly decamp to his chair if given half a chance, and more than one team has caught him giving the arms of the halo a fond pat as he passes by. It’s amazing what a human mind will latch onto for comfort in the absence of any logical source of the same.

The actual excavation team itself, though—that is another story. Every member of that team is a walking horror for his Soldier, and they’ve never been able to erase that long term, to make him forget his fear of them—to be docile and easily handled near them—for any longer than it takes his skull to knit itself back together. Hopefully this visit will end better than the last time.

And of course, his Soldier will dig his heels in, every time, when confronted with certain categories of mission objective that mandate the suffering of small children. He’s reminded his Soldier countless times that certain messages are better conveyed with the death of a child, and he’s given up on that piece of advice ever sticking. His Soldier _will_ kill a child if ordered to, though he’ll often rationalize his way out of taking such shots if it isn’t a distinct part of the mission objective.

He’ll kill them—unhappily—but he won’t make them suffer, or even acknowledge them as primary targets, unless he’s beaten into doing it, typically for hours, with several consecutive deep halo sessions and a variety of drugs. Even then, the results are often varied and tend to be more damaging to his Soldier than they are worth. It’s extremely inefficient to have to put his Soldier back together again afterward if one can simply design a more suitable mission objective.

Some—Sasha, for instance, who still has much to learn about proper objectives—would consider that last bit of stubbornness to be a flaw in the programming, but as far as the General’s concerned, it’s anything but. His Soldier is a weapon, not a monster. Having lines he won’t cross, particularly that specific line, is what sets him apart from the assorted evils of the world.

It certainly makes his Soldier a creature of Mother Russia, and not one of HYDRA. He fully intends to keep it that way. HYDRA is many things, none of them good, but they will _never_ have his Soldier.

The General pulls the door to his office shut, and scans the room for signs of tampering or placed mics. It’s unlikely, but he hasn’t survived this long by being incautious. There’s no reason to get complacent in his 80s, especially if he wants to see his 90s, wants to guide the project into new hands instead of letting it fall where it may. When he’s satisfied, he picks up the receiver, dials, waits for the tone that marks a successful connection.

“Base ZC-05PZ. This is General Karpov calling from ZC-02VB. _All good times should be remembered_.” The code phrase for “Is this line secure?” And it had better be secure, or he will be restructuring that base with air-to-surface missiles and moving the excavation team somewhere else. Siberia, maybe. Pull the important things back East, tuck them away, keep them safe. The strategy had worked in the Great Patriotic War; it would work now. If the team missed being near Yekaterinburg, they could complain to someone who cared.

The line beeps twice, two-toned. “ _And the bad along with them_. Line is secure, General.”

Good. It would be a pain to relocate that team. “Put Yaroslav Danilovich on.”

“Right away, General.”

It’s only a minute or two before the line is live again. “General Karpov!” The voice that speaks is amiable, almost cheerful, despite the role its owner plays so well in the Winter Soldier project. “It’s been over a year. Over two, even. Finally running into the next glitch?”

He has no time for pleasantries, so he doesn’t bother with them. “We need to redo Seventeen. There’s something breaking through. And a touchup on Rusted.”

There’s a wordless, considering hum. “Seventeen, huh? Which sister? Not all three, I hope.” He hears wheels squealing as the man moves his chair to a terminal. “Or maybe the parents?”

“Sister, just the one. Barbara, the youngest.” He thinks a moment. “Called Babs, or something like that. Brown hair. Curls.”

“Ah, the dead one. Pneumonia can be a real bitch when they’re young like that, am I right?” There’s typing as the team leader pulls up the appropriate files. “Has anyone been sick around him, or…? You know how all these pieces get blurred together, General. We might have to update Longing, too, if it’s an illness with a lot of coughing.”

Heaven forfend they have to deal with Longing again. It makes his skin crawl just thinking about it. They’d built that trigger word to _last_. It had taken almost a year all to itself to do so. “No illnesses. My granddaughter Maria was abducted, and he returned her safely. It seems he remembered how to sing in the process of comforting her. Some American lullaby. He couldn’t describe it when pressed.”

“That’s promising, at least, if he can’t place the song. We’ll pull it all out in the open, sir, examine the details he can give us, demand a few more, and then strip everything back, same as usual.” A pause, then, “Does he need to remember your granddaughter?”

“ _Yes_.” He gives the word the emphasis it needs. Maria is even more promising than Vasily in some ways. “And not just factual details. I want the emotional resonance intact. _No aversion to her_.”

“Oy. That’s going to be tricky, General. She’s the same age as when little Babs died, and he’s got similar experiences in both cases after being around her for a few summers, so the overlap is…” He blows through his teeth, almost a whistle. “I can leave the emotions connected to Maria instead of building in avoidance, but I can’t guarantee none of the facts are lost. I’ll try, but that’s going to be difficult. And Babs will probably grow back if we don’t add at least _some_ bite to the barrier.”

“Do your best. Be inventive, if you have to.” He drums his fingers on a stack of folders, idly opens the top one. “Fashion a replica, implant memories of some other dead child to cover this one up or at least confuse the issue if the memory resurfaces later. Invent a handler’s child, if that makes it easier. Pick a handler. Any of them will do, except for my son.”

His Soldier does better with confusion than most, tending to both ask for clarification and accept the answers he is given, though that, also, is not a guarantee. He hadn’t taken the explanation of Sasha’s girl, Katya, but had insisted on the brown hair. Of course, none of his sisters could ever have had quite the mean streak Katya has.

“Understood, General.” There’s more typing. “Right. So what’s wrong with Rusted?”

He runs a finger along the paper at the front of the first folder. “I’m not certain anything _is_ wrong with it, but I’m not taking a chance. He took a keen interest in a bit of stationery on this op, thought Maria should learn to draw.” He narrows his eyes. “Could be nothing. Could be Rogers.”

The reaction to the trigger word, when spoken in the proper tone, had been pain, but not confusion. Rusted is at least intact, even if there’s something chipping away at it. It is easier, kinder, to renew elements of this conditioning prematurely than to wait for something to slip through and try to fix the glitch.

He should have known there would be an issue with Seventeen on a mission like this past one, but there was no other, better option, no one on the entire continent he would trust more with his granddaughter than his Soldier. It’s a damn shame this is the outcome, but if they’re careful and thorough, it shouldn’t be an issue going forward.

They’ll resurface Seventeen, rebuild it entirely if they have to, and hopefully be done with it without any need for more lies. His Soldier might take his word as solid truth, but it is far, far better if he can actually speak truth. His Soldier deserves at least that much from him, after everything he’s been put through.

There’s a commiserating noise on the other end. “Could be, could be. Hope not, though. That one is tenacious. We’ll know more about what we’re dealing with when we open him up and get in there. When should we expect him, and how long do we have to work?”

“Come to ZC-02VB, and bring your tools. He’ll be ready when you arrive, and I can spare him for two months, not a day longer. He’ll be coming out of drug trials. Plan for that.”

“I’ll give the orders to pack up, General. See you soon.”

The General puts the receiver down, gathers up the rest of the reports to inspect while he waits for the medical researchers to finish with their current round of testing. He’s already interrupted their progress once. If they are going to find a way to keep his Soldier still during surgeries using chemicals instead of cumbersome manacles and straps, the team will need time to do their work.

And they do need to find a way. It’s increasingly dangerous to resort to Sputnik for such things, and wasteful, given that it doesn’t last as long as it needs to and they need to _remove_ any surgeon afterward who overheard the deactivation code. The fewer people with access to that particular set of keys, the better, but surgical teams did not grow on trees.

As he flips through papers and signs off where he approves, he spares a thought about the impending arrival of Yaroslav Danilovich and his team of psychologists and neurosurgeons. Give them a few hours to pack up, five or so hours for the drive, a few hours to set up in the secondary prep room, at least a nap… They’ll get started Monday after lunch, a nice, professional bit of scheduling.

He opens a lower drawer in his desk, pulls out a tumbler and a sealed bottle of vodka, pours himself a finger or so.

It was always a risk, pulling in the excavation team. They were good at what they did, but it was always possible he would send his Soldier to them and he’d come back damaged, that some piece of his history was actually a structural element, a load-bearing memory, and couldn’t be plucked out without an entire skillset collapsing. It helped to anchor the gaps around trigger words and coded phrases, to condition him to shy away from those subjects, but that was no guarantee.

The excavation team was an undeniable risk, but it was a far bigger risk to let the Sergeant start to grow back like the noxious weed he was, seeking out cracks in the programming and stubbornly making his own cracks where the programming was smooth, strong and perfectly crafted. The Sergeant had been a good man, full of admirable qualities and a winning personality, but his time was _over_ , his life lived and lost, his chapter torn from the book and tossed in the fire.

He’ll be damned if he lets the Sergeant’s ghost destroy his Soldier.

Not after the years he’s put into assembling his Soldier from the myriad jagged pieces that remained of the Sergeant after that tumble. He would not see his work undone at this late date, not when his rigid control over his Soldier—and his Soldier’s unwavering loyalty to him despite the nature of that control—was what allowed him to keep HYDRA merely nipping at his heels and not taking over the entire project, and then the country.

He would not let his countrymen suffer under HYDRA on top of Brezhnev’s mismanagement. They had enough to survive as it was. If one super soldier was enough, he’d dedicate the entire Winter Soldier project to stamping the menace out of his country. But he’d waited too long, thinking HYDRA had their uses and could be discarded afterward. The infection was too deeply set now to do anything but maintain a pocket of health and hope Mother Russia could spring back later.

His Soldier was the anchor for that pocket of resistance. He did not respond well to an overt HYDRA presence, would not reliably comply if assigned a known HYDRA handler, often attacked HYDRA members of a support team when an opportunity presented itself. And he was uncannily good at detecting which personnel were HYDRA and which were misguided but genuine citizens.

It was a convenient thing, that ingrained hate response. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to build something like that, if that bespectacled little worm of a mad scientist—admittedly, a genius, but what a wretched, disgusting creature—hadn’t laid the groundwork in Austria.

Captain America, too, despite being a thorn in his side requiring no fewer than three separate trigger words to carve out, had served the purpose of priming his beloved Sergeant Barnes to resist HYDRA before he’d crashed that plane and removed the only possible obstacle to making proper use of the broken man at the bottom of the ravine.

He’d drink to them, to Zola and Rogers, if he were feeling gracious. Without them, he could never have succeeded with his Soldier. Those two had unknowingly made an admirable team, despite their differences. They would probably hate for anyone to lump them together like that. The General smiles into his glass. Well, the one was long dead and the other dying soon, if news from America was accurate. He _would_ toast to Zola’s swift demise, whenever he finally succumbed to the cancer.

Creating a hatred—a _pure_ hatred, not merely some watery, half-hearted opposition diluted with fear—for something as insidious as HYDRA… Crafting an abhorrence for HYDRA as persistent and unchangeable as his Soldier’s was, able to simmer and bubble under a heavy lid for decades and escape detection even as he was loaned out to do HYDRA’s work in the world…

That would have been impossible. Maintaining it, though, was a simple task. Indirect encouragement, mild chastisement instead of proper reprimands, amusement when confronted with the results of an outburst—it was too simple to nurture and reinforce his Soldier’s revulsion for HYDRA.

Maintaining other things—maintaining, for instance, the empty places where home and family and country and self tried to crowd back in—was far less simple. For that, one needed to get out the tools and start digging. For that, one needed to call in Yaroslav Danilovich’s excavation team, and damn the risks involved.

It was walking a tightrope, picking out and burning the threads of the Sergeant’s family and loved ones and leaving his own threads behind and thriving. He’d spent years cultivating his Soldier’s loyalty and fondness toward the new generation of handlers who would someday take the project reins. He would hate to have to start over, reintroduce his grandchildren, reseed an empty plot of land in his Soldier’s broken mindscape. He’d do it, but what a waste.

His Soldier’s protective drive was much stronger with small children and other fragile things. He’d lost count of how many notations about that flaw had made it into the Winter Soldier files before he’d sat down with the excavation team and they’d all finally decided it was better stewardship to make use of that part of him than to try burning it out yet again.

It came at a cost, of course. Most things do. Nurture his Soldier’s attachment to helpless, young, fragile things, and risk bringing up the source of said attachment—a young Rogers, a trio of sisters, a neighborhood of children and the elderly, a cadre of pupils at a local boxing ring, a slew of young soldiers traumatized at the front, fellow prisoners at the Austrian work camp… the list of causes the Sergeant had championed was seemingly endless, and all of the items on it a possible threat to his programming.

The General leans back in his chair, rubs at the sore joints in his fingers. Perhaps the time has come to reconsider partnership with the Red Room as a viable option, after the excavation team finishes their work over the year’s end. He’s resisted cooperation with that branch for years, but their Black Widow program would give his Soldier an overabundance of small, delicate, impressionable things to be distracted by—possibly enough to give the Sergeant’s list of buried attachments some stiff competition—but without displacing his grandchildren.

The Red Room’s invitations—requests, really, almost pleas—haven’t stopped coming every time they begin a new crop, or a current crop hits a new milestone. And they were gathering up a new crop, if the latest missive was correct. He can send his Soldier out to Belarus for a few months, at least. Or a few years with the understanding that he was still on call for his regular missions and might be retrieved without notice.

His Soldier would need a proper handler to manage such a lengthy mission, and a truncated support team. A medic, a technician. Simple to obtain. Volodya might appreciate the chance to get to warmer climes than Vidyayevo for a while, and there are plenty of options to choose from for the other two. 

The idea is pleasing the longer he thinks on it. His Soldier shouldn’t have much trouble teaching the budding widows. After all, he’s already shown initiative in teaching little girls to bite, and bite hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s Musevisa one last time. This is the refrain. Unlike the lyrics, the Soldier isn’t going to have a very merry Christmas, and it won’t be good for him. *shrug* I did say everything was horrible, didn’t I?
> 
> If you want to hear the tune, you can do so [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeiXN8k_mIg).
> 
>  
> 
> **Further Notes:**
> 
>  
> 
> [black screen with white lettering]  
> The General, his family, and other mentioned characters will appear again in future works in the series.  
> [/black screen with white lettering] 
> 
> Wow, this has been a lot of fun! There’s plenty more lurking in the wings to be finished up and posted, but in the meantime, thank you for reading! 
> 
> If you have questions or just want to chat about this stuff, you can find me [here](https://flamingo-queen-writes.tumblr.com/). Unlike the Soldier and little Maria, I don’t bite! ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings: 
> 
> In this story, a little girl is kidnapped, threatened, and treated very roughly. One of her captors suggests sexually abusing her and then selling her, but _this does not happen_. During her captivity, the little girl does sustain minor injuries one might expect from being kidnapped and held for ransom. At one point, her rescuer worries that she has been sexually abused, but learns that she has not been. 
> 
> Also, the Winter Soldier is mean to some bad people. It gets a little... detailed.
> 
> And, new content warning in later chapters (starting in chapter 4) for some of the Soldier's thoughts having a touch of the suicidal ideation to them.


End file.
